This Is Sick

It is like they are in competition with other Republican states to see who can come up with the most oppressive laws against us. Idaho wants to lock us up and throw away the key!

Idaho bill would make medical treatment for trans youth punishable by life in prison
The Hill
By Reid Wilson
March 9, 2022


Idaho’s state House of Representatives has approved the most far-reaching bill yet to criminalize medical treatments for transgender youth, a measure that threatens anyone who facilitates that treatment — or even helps a minor travel to another state to receive gender-affirming care — to be sentenced to life in prison.

The measure, approved Tuesday on a mostly party-line vote, adds medical care for transgender youth to a section of Idaho law already on the books that bans female genital mutilation.

It adds language making it a felony either to perform gender-affirming surgery on transgender youth or to provide medication meant to block or delay the onset of puberty.

The existing law already makes a felony of anyone who takes a child from Idaho to another state for the purpose of female genital mutilation; the new language would add transporting someone across state lines for gender-affirming medical care to the felony list.

This is SICK!

Idaho lawmakers seek to punish parents who take trans youth to other states for health care
Idaho's bill is among the strictest of 30 similar pieces of Republican-backed legislation proposed this year. Legal experts said it could be vulnerable to challenges.
NBC News
By Tyler Kingkade
March 9, 2022


The Idaho House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation to make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to seek out gender-affirming health care for their transgender child.

The bill is among 29 pieces of Republican-backed legislation nationwide proposed so far this year to curtail health care for transgender youth, and it coincides with dozens of additional bills seeking to limit what can be discussed about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools and restrict transgender athletes in school sports. 

But LGBTQ advocates and legal experts say the Idaho proposal differs by criminalizing cases of transgender children traveling to other states to obtain certain medical procedures.

“We are seeing the severity of those policies start to really ramp up,” said Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on preventing suicide in the LGBTQ population.

[…]

The bill cleared the Idaho House by a vote of 55-13 on Tuesday. It now heads to the Idaho Senate, where Republicans hold a 28-to-7 majority over Democrats.

Four experts who reviewed the legislation told NBC News that the Idaho proposal could be vulnerable to legal challenges. It is not unlike laws from a prior generation, including the criminalization of interracial couples traveling to another state to get married, the experts said, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. People already take trips to other states to do things that are legal that they can’t do where they live — from consuming cannabis, gambling or buying fireworks to obtaining an abortion — and there’s little states can do to stop that because of constitutional limits on restricting interstate travel. 

The bill presents “complicated questions whether Idaho could, in that fashion, use their lawmaking authority to try to prevent people in Idaho from taking advantage of the differing law of another state,” said David B. Cruz, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Where to begin, as I write this I am seething.

These Republicans big thing that they push is “We are going to get government out of your life.” What a crock of bull!

They are forcing government right into your most private lives.

In 2003 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Lawrence v. Texas that you have a right to privacy, it is a lesson that the Republicans never learned.