While millions of Texan families were dealing with intense snowfall, loss of power and inability to basic necessities like food and water in February of 2021, senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Cancún, Mexico.

While the Texas death toll reached more than 40,000 in the height of the pandemic in March of 2021, Abbott issued Executive Order GA-63, dropping the state-wide mask mandate and opening businesses back to full capacity. Now, more than 84,000 people have died from COVID-19 related complications in Texas alone. 

In September, Senate Bill 8 was signed into legislation, which restricts women from getting an abortion after six weeks into their pregnancy.

On Feb. 21, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in an opinion that providing gender-affirming medical care to minors is considered child abuse under state law. On Feb. 23, Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services, directing them to consider transitional surgery and hormones as child abuse, re-affirming the same opinion as Paxton.

Time and time again, the representatives of our state have let us down.

Now, a new idea is circulating that anyone under the age of 18 who wants to get a transitional surgery or take transitional hormones can get their family, teachers, doctors, friends, therapists and anyone else who may know put in jail under the arrest of child abuse.

Following the recent surge of anti-transgender or anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the U.S., state legislators might agree with this ideology, but this is an invasion of personal rights, and no government, big or small, should have their hands on that.

Not only does the reporting of minors who have undergone transitioning get their loved ones in trouble, but it will cause distrust with healthcare providers when there should be patient-doctor confidentiality, and it will also undermine the stories and the true damage to abuse survivors.

Think about a 16-year-old girl who just completed her physical transition and now looks the way she wants to be identified, and she’s been in a car wreck. Does she hope that no one will report her when she gets to the emergency room, or does she sit in agony and pain, knowing that she was stuck, and may not live past it? Or, people could easily take advantage of trans youth if they found out they had transitional hormones or therapy, by blackmailing them and holding the one freedom they had to be comfortable in their own skin against them.

While parents may try to help their transgender children feel better in their skin with surgeries, even if the child is unsure, and the surgery is often hard to reverse, these surgeries are expensive, invasive and painful. Gender reassignment surgeries can range from $25,000-$70,000, and insurance doesn’t cover much of it. The physical costs of reassignment surgeries doesn’t include the hormones and therapy that are needed after.

People who are transgender have one of the highest suicide rates. The Trevor Project surveyed more than 34,000 LGBTQ+ youths, aged 13-24 in 2019, and found that 39% of LBGTQ+ youth considered suicide, and this statistic includes half of the transgender and non-binary minors who were surveyed. Placing a potential new bill on young transgender will have devastating effects on mental health for kids across the state.

Texas legislation has gone too far. They’re infringing on the personal, protected rights of individuals in the state. No one should be limited by the government to be unable do what they would like to their own body, and the way they want to live their life. This isn’t a fight against political parties anymore, it’s about letting people have their own personal, protected freedoms.

It’s primary election time now. Get informed about candidates, and go out and vote. The only way we can expect change is if we hold those in power accountable, and fight for the unalienable rights that we’ve lost in the “great state” of Texas.