Press Release

50+ Reproductive Rights-Aligned Orgs Call Out Anti-Abortion Tactics in Recent Anti-Trans Bills

December 16, 2025

OUR STATEMENT

Washington, DC – Physicians for Reproductive Health joined The National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, the National Partnership for Women & Families, and more than 50 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in calling out how two bills targeting transgender health care, which are advancing in the U.S. House, rely on the same dangerous tactics long used to attack abortion access.

In a letter sent to House members, the organizations warn that these bills mirror efforts to strip people of bodily autonomy and criminalize doctors for providing medically necessary, evidence-based care.

“For years, our organizations have fought for abortion rights and access and have witnessed the erosion of people’s bodily autonomy and attempts to criminalize doctors for providing care. This playbook is all too familiar, and extremists have now turned their sights on LGBTQI+ people and their loved ones,” the organizations wrote.

The letter comes as Republican lawmakers push forward two extreme anti-transgender health care bills. One bill, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), would criminalize medical providers for delivering evidence-based care to transgender young people in a wide range of circumstances. The other, introduced by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), would bar federal Medicaid funds from being used to cover this care.

“Let’s be clear: a politician is never more qualified to make decisions about a person’s health care than that person and their health care providers,” the letter argues. “Just as politicians have no place making decisions about people’s pregnancies, they have no business interfering with gender-affirming care.”

Read the full letter (PDF). The full text appears below.

Letter Opposing H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498

Dear Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, and Members of the House of Representatives,

We, the undersigned organizations committed to reproductive health, rights, and justice, write in strong opposition to H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498. H.R. 3492 aims to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth by criminalizing medical providers for care that is essential, best practice medical care, and, in many cases, life-saving. Meanwhile, H.R. 498 would bar the use of federal Medicaid funding to cover this necessary care for young people. For years, our organizations have fought for abortion rights and access and have witnessed the erosion of people’s bodily autonomy and attempts to criminalize doctors for providing care. This playbook is all too familiar, and extremists have now turned their sights on LGBTQI+ people and their loved ones. We remain united with our LGBTQI+ partners in opposing this bill and any other attempts to restrict gender-affirming care. 

These cruel bills are a politicized attempt to deny transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive people basic dignity and restrict their care based on myths and disinformation. H.R. 3492, a proposed gender-affirming care ban that amends a law on female genital mutilation, is medically inaccurate, a deeply troubling misuse of human rights law, and also rooted in a false narrative of predatory providers. Providers who offer abortion care also often provide gender-affirming care, and have seen these same tired arguments be used to intimidate medical professionals and limit access to reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. Opponents of abortion and gender-affirming care often paint a fabricated picture that portrays this care as coercive and manipulative, in which doctors are pressuring vulnerable individuals into undergoing procedures. In fact, the reality is that gender-affirming care and abortion, when provided according to well-established standards, are patient-driven, medically sound, and often life-saving. But for over a decade, anti-abortion legislators have proposed bills that rely on this false narrative to criminalize providers for providing patients needed care. Faced with fines of over $100,000 and up to 99 years in prison, abortion providers have faced intimidation attempting to deter them from administering this care, putting them in an impossible situation of choosing to protect their ability to practice or fulfilling their obligations to offer patients necessary care. As a result of these decades-long attacks, abortion access has suffered, as has access to broader reproductive care that is impacting patients that are not even seeking abortion care. Threatening to criminalize doctors for providing gender-affirming care will only limit providers from exercising their professional judgment to do what is best for patients, thus eroding the trust between patients, their families, and their doctors and hindering overall care delivery and health outcomes. Many young people will be entirely unable to access the health care they need. 

Everyone, including young people, should have the ability to make decisions about their health care with dignity and respect and without political interference. Gender-affirming care is safe, beneficial, and medically necessary, but H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498 seek to condition access to care on political whims. Let’s be clear: a politician is never more qualified to make decisions about a person’s health care than that person and their health care providers. Just as politicians have no place making decisions about people’s pregnancies, they have no business interfering with gender-affirming care. Such interference denies people access to the care they need, undermines medical professionals in exercising their professional judgment, and shatters the trust between providers and their patients around such care. Furthermore, it opens the door for even more restrictions on health care driven by ideology and politics, at the expense of the lives and well-being of those who need access to it. 

H.R. 498 similarly represents a dangerous and baseless attack on young people’s access to gender-affirming care. Prohibiting the use of federal Medicaid dollars for this essential care would harm young people’s health and safety—harms we have seen result many times over from restrictions on Medicaid coverage of abortion care. For some young people and their families, the loss of federal funding would force them to choose between paying for their care out-of-pocket and covering basic needs like food and housing, exacerbating the financial insecurity that many Medicaid enrollees already face. For many more young people, this bill could force them to delay this time-sensitive care or put it entirely out of their reach by imposing costs that they simply cannot afford. And these burdens could fall heaviest on Black, Indigenous, and Latine young people, who are more likely to be enrolled in Medicaid and more likely to already be facing barriers to gender-affirming care. 

These harms are not speculative: for decades, we have witnessed the dangers of the Hyde Amendment’s similar restrictions on abortion care for Medicaid enrollees. By prohibiting the use of federal funding for most abortions, the Hyde Amendment has forced some Medicaid enrollees to risk their financial stability to pay for abortion care, while many others have had to delay or entirely forgo it. When Medicaid enrollees cannot access abortion care in a timely manner—or at all—the consequences for their health, well-being, and economic security have proven to be dire and long-lasting. Medicaid exists to ensure that everyone can get access to care no matter their means; subjecting this critical program to the whims of politicians is a betrayal of its very purpose and threatens all who rely on it. We urge Congress not to repeat this same mistake for young people who need gender-affirming care.

The American people want legislation that will improve their lives, lower the cost of health care, and help put food on their tables—not inflammatory, medically unsound proposals like H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498, which are plainly used for cheap political gain at the expense of people’s freedom, dignity, and autonomy. These bills do nothing to keep people safe or to improve people’s lives. Targeting care for young people is just the latest demonstration of extremists borrowing key tactics from the anti-abortion playbook. This is part of a broader assault against health care for LGBTQI+ people that also includes promoting misinformation and stigmatizing those seeking care. The impact of these bills would be devastating. We know this because we have seen these tactics before, culminating in the Dobbs decision and its aftermath. As such, we urge you to remain steadfastly opposed to H.R. 3492, H.R. 498, and other similar attempts to restrict access to gender-affirming care.