Anti-abortion lawmaker introduces bill forcing trans adults to detransition
The bill also prohibits a common form of contraception.
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”
Nelson Mandela
On February 26th, Representative Brent Money — an “abortion abolitionist” who, earlier this year, introduced a bill to charge abortion patients with homicide, with the support of anti-rights activist and charlatan Abby Johnson — introduced HB 3399 in the Texas legislature. This bill (HB 3399) amends Texas law banning gender-affirming care for minors to now include adults.
As reproductive rights supporters and anti-reproductive-rights groups alike have long understood, anti-rights legislation that zeroes in on minors is used as a politically advantageous starting point to launch later attacks on the rights of adults. For example, abortion restrictions requiring parental consent for a teen’s abortion “feed forward”1 into abortion bans on adults, with daddy government getting to decide how sick a pregnant patient has to be before a doctor is allowed to save that patient’s life.
Brent Money’s anti-trans, anti-rights bill is a perfect example of the “feeding forward”2 of anti-rights legislation. In fact, “[e]ver since right-wing states began banning age-appropriate gender-affirming healthcare for minors in 2021, trans people and LGBTIQ advocates have warned that they were not motivated by any kind of sincere concern for ‘the children’ and would not stop at restrictions on minors if allowed to go further.”3 If human rights opponents are targeting kids, they’re going to target adults, too.
“The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.”
Aesop's Fables, The Wolf and the Lamb4
Money’s bill, HB 3399, is a clear attempt to functionally erase trans people by banning gender-affirming healthcare and forcing all trans people to detransition. The bill states that people using hormonal therapy “shall wean off the prescription drug” and “may not switch to or begin a course of treatment on another prescription drug.” Forced conformity is the enemy of individuality and individual liberty.
The bill would also ban certain forms of permanent, as well as reversible, forms of contraception; and while these contraception methods would be banned only if it is used as gender affirming care, this bill would serve as a gateway, “feeding forward”5 into banning contraception more broadly.
Specifically, the bill bans the performance of “a surgery that sterilizes” a person and lists banned surgical procedures, curiously including vasectomy, a form of contraception. The bill also states that physicians may not “provide, prescribe, administer, or dispense any of the following prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility,” including estrogen, a main component in combined hormonal contraceptives. Furthermore, the bill states that physicians may not “remove any otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue,” a phrase which could be used to prohibit tubal ligation, a permanent form of birth control.
As noted above, Money belongs to the “abortion abolitionist” camp of the anti-rights movement that co-opts both the language of equality and the legacy of the abolitionists who worked toward ending chattel slavery.6 Like the majority of the anti-rights movement, these self-described “abortion abolitionists” oppose contraception7 and frequently spread the anti-abortion myth that contraception is an abortifacient.89 (In their arguments, what they are actually suggesting is that contraceptives are contragestives, but they are too ignorant to know the difference.) It is no coincidence that vasectomies are included in the list of prohibited surgeries or that other language in the bill can be used to prohibit contraception more broadly, either through expansive application of the law or by “feeding forward”10 into new legislation.
HB 3399 would also restrict physicians’ ability to practice medicine in accordance with the conscience, which would undoubtedly result in great moral distress, and risks turning caring physicians into criminals. The bill would “would transform their [physicians’] fiduciary duty into a criminal act.”11
Laws that attack the humanity and the very existence of trans people through discriminatory prohibitions criminalizing vital healthcare are dangerous, cruel, and tyrannical. Human rights and individual liberty are the oxygen of life. If one group suffocates, we all suffocate with them. *You can contact Brent Money at (512) 463-0880 and brent.money@house.texas.gov.
Doan, A. E., & Schwartz , C. (2020, January 14). Father knows best: “protecting” women through state ... Wiley Online Library . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12337
Doan, A. E., & Schwartz , C. (2020, January 14). Father knows best: “protecting” women through state ... Wiley Online Library . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12337
Stroop, C. (2023, September 20). Opinion: How anti-abortion Laws Shape Trans Healthcare bans. openDemocracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/republican-states-gender-affirming-care-adults-bans-tactics/
Aesop. (n.d.). The Wolf and the Lamb. Litscape.com. https://www.litscape.com/author/Aesop/The_Wolf_And_The_Lamb.html
Doan, A. E., & Schwartz , C. (2020, January 14). Father knows best: “protecting” women through state ... Wiley Online Library . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12337
Moseley-Morris, K. (2023, September 2). Anti-abortion “abolitionists” take slavery rhetoric to the Next Level • Alabama Reflector. Alabama Reflector. https://alabamareflector.com/2023/09/02/anti-abortion-abolitionists-take-slavery-rhetoric-to-the-next-level/
The untold Millions. Abolish Human Abortion. (n.d.). https://abolishhumanabortion.com/the-untold-millions/
Beedle Heidi Beedle is a former soldier, H. (2023, March 10). The new abolitionists: The Christian anti-abortion movement gaining ground in state legislatures. Colorado Times Recorder. https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/03/the-new-abolitionists-the-christian-anti-abortion-movement-gaining-ground-in-state-legislatures/52204/
The long campaign to turn birth control into the new abortion. UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (2025, February 6). https://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/
Doan, A. E., & Schwartz , C. (2020, January 14). Father knows best: “protecting” women through state ... Wiley Online Library . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12337
Kraschel KL, Chen A, Turban JK, Cohen IG. Legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth: politics eclipse healthcare. Cell Rep Med. 2022;3(8):100719.