Legislation continuing Tennessee Republicans' persecution of their transgender minority is working its way through Nashville. Not satisfied with criminalizing transgender care for minors, legally requiring trans men to use women's rest rooms and trans women to shit beside men, forbidding state prisons from allowing gender care medication for trans inmates, et cetera ad nauseam, the state's Republicans now want to require extensive data collection on patients receiving gender-affirming care to the state.
The Tennessee House passed House Bill 754 in March; the Senate passed a version of its companion Bill 676 on Monday, amended to authorize the state Attorney General to investigate non-compliance with the law.
Supporters of the bill describe the measure as a tool for understanding medical outcomes. Opponents say it is something else entirely. They say it is a mechanism for tracking a vulnerable population. ...
The legislation would require clinics to report detailed information about gender-affirming care to the state, part of a broader effort, lawmakers say, to study treatment trends. But similar proposals in Tennessee have already raised alarms about what happens when “data collection” begins to resemble [patient] identification.
The legislation does not apply to cisgender patients getting estrogen or testosterone treatments, only to transgender patients, making any claims that its intent is to quantify patients who come to regret their transition — a tiny minority within a tiny minority — and to guarantee their right to de-transition —highly suspect. The absolute number of cisgender patients who later regret estrogen or testosterone treatment is probably very similar.
This legislation is not health care. It's intimidation. It’s big government. It’s Big Brother Watching You.
The measure now returns to the Tennessee House for reconciliation with the Senate's amended version. Given the overwhelming Republican majority in both statehouses, passage is all but absolutely certain.
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