President Joe Biden signed an almost $900 billion defense bill even though the bill contained a provision containing restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
The National Defense Authorization Act passed both the House and Senate in recent weeks after months of negotiating between Democrats and Republicans. One issue in the bill was a measure to ban the military’s insurance Tricare from covering some gender-affirming care treatments. Other issues that were, however, struck from the final bill included restrictions on abortion access and DEI initiatives in the military.
Biden said that he and his administration “strongly opposes” restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans youth in a statement released after he signed the bill.
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“By prohibiting the use of appropriated funds, the Department of Defense will be compelled to contravene clinical practice guidelines and clinical recommendations. The provision targets a group based on that group’s gender identity and interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children,” he said. “This section undermines our all-volunteer military’s ability to recruit and retain the finest fighting force the world has ever known by denying health care coverage to thousands of our service members’ children.”
Biden added: “No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our Nation.”
Many Democrats in the House and the Senate had condemned the language of the bill, accusing Speaker Mike Johnson of trying to shore up support for his speakership by introducing such a conservative measure. Only 10 Democratic senators voted against the bill. Most House Democrats voted against it.
Ranking House Armed Services Democrat U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called the measure “bigoted against the trans community,” according to Politico.
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LGBTQ+ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign condemned the signing.
“Military families lay everything on the line for our country. They uproot and move at a moment’s notice, make immense personal sacrifices, and often risk their lives in defense of our freedoms. In turn, that sacrifice has been met with disrespect and the use of their children as a political bargaining chip,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said in a press release. “For them, this law is not about politics – it’s about losing the freedom to make their own health care decisions. Congress and the White House have failed military families. This country’s first anti-LGBTQ+ federal law in almost 30 years disgraces those who have sacrificed so much.”
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