The bill ‘Protect Children’s Innocence Act’, sponsored by right-wing firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), was approved by 216 votes to 211.
The US House of Representatives passed the Protect Children’s Innocence Act on Wednesday. It seeks to ban “genital or bodily mutilation of a minor.” The bill would effectively ban gender-affirming treatments for transgender children.
The bill, sponsored by right-wing firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), was approved by 216 votes to 211 and now heads to the Senate, where its fate is less certain.
What is Protect Children’s Innocence Act?
The ‘Protect Children’s Innocence’ Bill, which is yet to be passed by the Senate, seeks to amend section 116 of title 18, United States Code, with respect to genital and bodily mutilation and chemical castration of minors.
Greene’s bill would make it a federal crime to conduct a variety of procedures. “My bill, Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would make it a felony to perform ‘gender affirming care’ or ‘trans’ minors under 18,” Greene said in a post on X.
While explicitly criminalising female genital mutilation (FGM), the bill also targets surgeries meant to change a minor’s body “to correspond to a sex that differs from their biological sex.”
It also forbids some pharmacological forms of gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers.
Anyone performing or facilitating such practices faces up to 10 years in prison and fines under the bill.
“This important bill…will criminalise gender-affirming care on minors, not adults, on minors who have not yet grown up to make adult decisions,” Greene said ahead of the vote.
Representative Cory Mills, who voted in favour of the bill, said the Protect Children’s Innocence Act