Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that his office is issuing an emergency regulation clarifying that, because gender transition interventions are experimental, they are covered by existing Missouri law governing unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable business practices, including in administering healthcare services. The regulation is necessary due to the skyrocketing number of gender transition interventions, despite rising concerns in the medical community that these procedures are experimental and lack clinical evidence of safety or success.
“As Attorney General, I will protect children and enforce the laws as written, which includes upholding state law on experimental gender transition interventions,” said Attorney General Bailey. “Even Europe recognizes that mutilating children for the sake of a woke, leftist agenda has irreversible consequences, and countries like Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom have all sharply curtailed these procedures. I am dedicated to using every legal tool at my disposal to stand in the gap and protect children from being subject to inhumane science experiments.”
Because gender transition interventions are experimental, the regulation clarifies that state law already prohibits performing experimental procedures in the absence of specific guardrails. For gender transition interventions, those guardrails must include at least:
Specific informed-consent disclosures informing patients that, among other things:
- The use of puberty blocker drugs or cross-sex hormones to treat gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria is experimental and is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- The FDA has issued a warning that puberty blockers can lead to brain swelling and blindness
- Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (“NBHW”) recently declared that, at least for minors, “the risks of puberty suppressing treatment with GnRH-analogues and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits”
- One scientific study notes that an individual whose friend identifies as transgender is “more than 70 times” as likely to similarly identify as transgender, suggesting that many individuals “incorrectly believe themselves to be transgender and in need of transition” because of social factors
- The Endocrine Society found that “the large majority (about 85%) of prepubertal children with a childhood diagnosis did not remain GD/gender incongruent in adolescence”
Prohibiting gender transition interventions when the provider fails to:
- ensure that the patient has received a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions over the course of not fewer than 18 months to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities
- ensure that any existing mental health comorbidities of the patient have been treated and resolved
- adopt and follow a procedure to track all adverse effects that arise from any course of covered gender transition intervention for all patients beginning on the first day of intervention and continuing for a period of not fewer than 15 years
- obtain and keep on file informed written consent
- ensure that the patient has received a comprehensive screening to determine whether the patient has autism
- ensure (at least annually) that the patient is not experiencing social contagion with respect to the patient’s gender identity
Once promulgated, Attorney General Bailey’s emergency regulation will last 30 legislative days or 180 days, whichever is longer.
