The mask is off. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Protect Children’s Innocence” Act does no such thing—it plainly states that “genital or bodily mutilation” is “not a violation” when carried out on minors with intersex variations such as ovotestes. It simultaneously strips lifesaving care from trans adolescents. This is the first piece of legislation to explicitly acknowledge that nonconsensual surgeries for cosmetic and sterilizing purposes on intersex children are mutilation—and that lawmakers are happy to allow it.
H.R. 3492, like every state law banning gender-affirming care, carves out an exception for nonconsensual procedures on intersex children. First introduced in 2022, this federal legislation is now reintroduced with new language that explicitly admits that the exception is endorsing “genital mutilation” on intersex children.
They’re not even hiding it anymore: they know they wrote a bill that hurts kids rather than protecting them.
This Act aims to take away trans adolescents’ ability to access healthcare they desperately need. The care transgender adolescents receive is informed, consensual, and proven by research to be vital for their well-being. But Marjorie Taylor Greene would rather force a clitoral reduction on an intersex 6-month-old than allow a trans adolescent to get a prescription for puberty-pausing medication.
This legislation proves the only concern for lawmakers is forcing trans and intersex kids to obey sex stereotypes, conforming them to narrow perspectives of what “male” and “female” can look like. These lawmakers seek to control children’s bodies at the cost of their health and autonomy.
Trans and intersex youth deserve control over what happens to their own bodies, and this bill takes that control away from both.
