AUSTIN, Texas — Hundreds of people were turned away from testifying at the Texas Capitol on Monday night as Chair Stephanie Klick shut down testimony on a bill that would end so-called gender-affirming medical care for adolescents who identify as transgender.

As many as 450 people were still waiting to testify, many of them against the bill. Right before midnight, Klick told her committee members she was ending testimony and that a portal would still be open for people to comment on House Bill 1686. Protesters laid down in the hallway of the Texas Capitol extension, chanting, “Klick lies, kids die,” before their own late rally to support LGBTQ rights.

Last session, bills to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy, along with transition-related surgery, failed to pass the Texas House. This session, bills are being carried in each chamber by Republican doctors, with 78 Republican lawmakers in the Texas House signing on as either sponsor or co-author.

Rep. Tom Oliverson, an anesthesiologist from Houston, is carrying the bill in the House. Sen. Donna Campbell, an emergency room doctor from New Braunfels, is sponsoring legislation in the Senate. Oliverson said he wanted to keep the discussion focused on facts and medical research, and early testimony was stacked with medical professionals and individuals who had reversed their sexual transition.

Oliverson’s bill amends the Texas Health & Safety Code, stopping the use of public dollars for medical interventions for adolescents who identify as transgender. The bill also outlaws specific types of medical intervention and empowers the attorney general to prosecute doctors to continue to offer such care. Oliverson said he specifically excluded parents from the bill because they were often swayed by doctors who favored medical intervention.

Two of the late testifiers offered typical testimony. Jonathan Saenz, who leads the pro-family, anti-abortion group Texas Values, told the committee that support for the bill had strengthened since 2021 because of more evidence and more information about the actual harm of gender-affirming care.

“Two years ago, this committee heard long, robust and shocking testimony about the harm that children are subjected to with child gender transitions,” Saenz said. “Two years later, we know so much more.”

Seven states have passed laws to outlaw gender-affirming medical care, Saenz said. More youngsters are coming forward to talk about the pitfalls of their transitions. And the Texas Medical Association — unlike a number of other health care groups — is no longer taking a position on the bill.

Saenz also passed around an article on Chloe Cole, a woman who reversed her transition and has spoken critically about the care and guidance she got before taking puberty blockers and completing surgery that transitioned her from female to male.

“Chloe talks in this article that one of her biggest regrets is how the beauty of motherhood was stripped from her at an early age, when she wasn’t able to fully comprehend that loss at age 15. She says, ‘I was a kid. I was thinking about fitting in, not the possibility of becoming a parent.’”

Saenz was followed by Molly Carnes, who described herself as "the Christian mother of a precious transgender child." She recently published a piece about her daughter's experience in the San Antonio Express-News.

“Here we are in the Public Health Committee meeting in Texas, where we set the record for having the highest number and highest rate of uninsured people in the country,” Carnes said. “But what we’re talking about today is trying to ban medical care that every major medical association endorses, trying to take away treatment from poor kids and adolescents.”

Time would be better spent fixing the state’s broken child welfare system, Carnes said.

“A system that lost the lives of 100 children since 2020,” Carnes said of the child welfare system. “Instead, you’re taking actions that could cause real harm to these (transgender) youth, but you don’t care, because you’re convinced that you know better than parents and specialists and transgender people themselves, and it appears you even think you know better than our Creator.”

Carnes added that her own child was living, joyfully, as a young woman. What doctors did to help her daughter cope was life-saving, Carnes told the committee. In her parting comment, Carnes took a shot at Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, who asked numerous witnesses whether doctors and parents of children seeking gender-affirming care should be prosecuted for child abuse.

“Rep. Tinderholt, you want to know what (the Apostle) Paul said? He said Galatians 3:28. ‘Neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male nor females because we’re all one in Christ,’ buddy,’” Carnes said.

Immediately, cheers could be heard going up outside the hearing room from all the people waiting outside.

The arguments presented in committee — the ones that appear to have swayed Republican lawmakers — go something like this: Countries like Sweden, which have a longer track record of sexual transition medical care, have scaled back gender-affirming care. One piece of research has showed an adolescent’s desire to transition dissipates once the child reaches adulthood. And critics of gender-affirming care say there is little proof that transitioning to a different gender significantly reduces the potential for suicide. 

The movement to end medical intervention also has two frequently used terms. “Affirmative care” is the idea that a child in the United States presents the idea he or she feels transgender, and then the doctor immediately moves to medical solutions, rather than putting up guard rails to consider whether the issue might be something else, like depression. The other term is “early onset gender dysphoria,” which is a hypothesis that youth with gender dysphoria are emerging in geographic or school clusters, possibly brought on by peer pressure. The growth of female-to-male transitions has drastically outpaced male-to-female transitions in recent years. 

Chloe Cole had her treatment, and gender surgery, in California. Texas doctors say gender surgery is rarely, if ever, recommended. During a recent appearance at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event, Cole was sympathetic to those who say they have gender dysphoria, and the need for mental health support.

Texas Values, on the other hand, did not affirm gender dysphoria as an actual medical condition and stood in front of a bus with a sign that said, “No child is born into the wrong body.”