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Passage of the restrictions by the Senate Emerging Issues Committee comes less than a week after the panel held a hearing on the legislation, illustrating the urgency Republicans have placed on the issue since the release of a report earlier this month alleging irreparable harm to vulnerable patients at a ��ѿ��ý transgender center for youth patients.

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A House committee signed off on similar restrictions Thursday, setting up likely debate in front of the full House chamber.

The Senate bill would bar “gender transition procedures” — including puberty blockers and hormone therapy — for individuals younger than 18, excluding those with a verifiable sex development disorder or when treating someone whose injury was “caused by or exacerbated” by “gender transition procedures,” according to the legislation.

The latest version also includes an exemption for “any procedure undertaken because the individual suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the individual in imminent danger of death or impairment of a major bodily function unless surgery is performed.”

That’s a break with House Republicans, who removed the same provision from that chamber’s transgender health care legislation last week after the sponsor voiced concerns that the exemption could be used as a loophole to provide gender-affirming care.

Senators on the Emerging Issues Committee approved the health care restrictions Monday with no debate by a party-line vote of 5-2.

Republicans last week referenced a whistleblower report by Jamie Reed, a former staff member of the Washington University Transgender Clinic at ��ѿ��ý Children’s Hospital.

She alleged that instead of providing mental health treatment to children who needed it, the center gave them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. She also alleged the center regularly referred minors for gender-transition surgery, contrary to public assurances by its doctors.

“Finally the cat’s out of the bag,” Sen. Elaine Gannon, R-De Soto, said last week. “And this is being exposed, and it needs to be exposed. And it needs to stop.”

Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat opposed to the legislation, called Reed’s article “conveniently timed” and said Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey “jumped right into the fray.”

“It has a lot of red flags to me,” Razer said last week.

On Monday, he told the Post-Dispatch, “I don’t take too much from them (Senate committees). We’ll wait and see what happens if this were to ever get onto the floor.”

“We won’t be taking a vote any time soon,” Razer said when asked what he’d do if the legislation made it to the floor, hinting at a long filibuster.

Reed had been in contact with Bailey prior to her going public with her allegations against the transgender center.

The Post-Dispatch requested records of any communications between attorney general’s office staff and Reed, between Jan. 20 and Feb. 12.

On Tuesday, a staff member for Bailey responded that “the earliest we expect responsive records, if any, to be available is on or about March 15.”

Republicans have focused on legislation limiting transgender athletes’ participation in sports and on restricting medical care for minors.

At the same time, measures to bar discrimination against LGBTQ individuals have languished in the Missouri Legislature — on one hand appearing to embrace public opinion and on the other hand rejecting it.

found 64% of respondents — including nearly half of Republicans and 4 out of 5 Democrats — supported protecting transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.

The same survey found 58% of respondents supported requirements that trans athletes compete on teams matching the sex they were assigned at birth, including 85% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats.

Forty-six percent of respondents supported, and 31% opposed, making it illegal for doctors to help someone younger than 18 with medical care for their gender transition.

Conservatives are increasingly focused on transgender health services as a 2024 campaign issue and have employed a strategy mirroring past fights over abortion by initially focusing on state-level restrictions on minors, CQ Roll Call reported.

“Fighting the exploitative transgender industry is now Republican orthodoxy embraced by the party’s most popular leaders, and we expect this issue will only gain more visibility as the 2024 campaign shifts into full gear,” Terry Schilling, president of the conservative think tank and super PAC American Principles Project, told CQ Roll Call.

Democrats, meanwhile, are echoing arguments once used against abortion restrictions. Abortions in Missouri have been largely banned since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case establishing the constitutional right to an abortion, last year.

“Of course they’re inserting themselves into those private health care conversations. The government is coming in and telling you what you can and can’t do — the government is,” Razer said. “And the people who claim to hate the government are the government.”

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