A bill that will make it illegal to provide transition-related care to minors passed through the Mississippi House in a 78-28 ruling this January. The bill, known as the Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act, will criminalize aiding minors with transition-related medical care and will cut funds to public health institutions that provide it. This is one of 31 bills introduced this year to Mississippi’s House of Representatives which target the rights of people within the LGBTQ community. The bill not only prohibits state funds from going toward gender-affirming care, but it also puts physicians at risk for having their licenses revoked.
“This is a political game. This is not about actually impacting real change,” says Jensen Matar, the executive director of Mississippi’s Transgender Resources Advocacy Networking and Services (TRANS) Program. “It’s to send a message that they don’t approve of trans existence and everything that kind of ties into that. They want to harm us. They think we’re no good. They want to cease us from existing.”
The bill will need to pass through Mississippi’s state Senate before it becomes law, but the odds of it being struck down are low since the GOP holds the majority in the Senate. Mississippi’s state Governor Tate Reeves, who also must sign the bill, belongs to the Republican party as well.
Mississippi will not be the first state to pass anti-trans laws. The ALCU is tracking over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills that will be advancing in state courts this year across the United States.
With the passage of the REAP Act, families will not be allowed to be reimbursed by insurers or by Medicaid, or by any other nation-sponsored health insurance programs. The bill will also bar the prescription of hormone replacement therapy or puberty blockers for minors. McKenna Raney-Gray, one attorney for ACLU’s LGBTQ Justice Project, stated her regret toward the language being used to vilify the intention of gender-affirming care.
“The terminology that they’re using in the names and the acts is incredibly inaccurate and mischaracterizing everything about gender-affirming care,” says Raney-Gray.
ACLU-MS also says, “Gender-affirming care will look different for every transgender person, making it all the more critical for these decisions to be between patients, their families, and their doctors—not politicians forcing policy onto these vulnerable young people.”
