Georgia Senate adds gender-affirming care limits to health bill

A bill to increase access to home healthcare services has been transformed to restrict gender-affirming care for transgender Georgians.

Republicans in the Georgia Senate added two last-minute amendments before passing the bill on party lines on Tuesday, according to WABE.

The first amendment to House Bill 54 would prohibit doctors from prescribing puberty blockers to children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

State Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, an internal medicine and geriatrics doctor, introduced the amendment and said it would not impact adults.

However, the second amendment, introduced by state Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, would prevent Georgia’s state health insurance from covering gender-affirming care for state employees and their dependents as well as preventing state hospitals from providing the care.

Senate Democrats voiced their disapproval of the last-minute changes and criticized Republicans from straying from bipartisan, affordability policies.

“Culture war bills are the easy things to do, to pick on vulnerable populations and try to distract your voters and the voters of Georgia from the failure of the Republican agenda in this country and in this state to deliver a good quality of life for Georgians,” said state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.

A similar bill to the second amendment, Senate Bill 39, failed to make it to a vote in the House last year.

“They couldn’t get their divisive agenda across the finish line last year, so they doubled down on treating children and trans adults as less than,” Bentley Hudgins, the Georgia state director of the Human Rights Campaign, told The Georgia Recorder. “Bullies don’t belong in government.”