Oregon Bill Would Require Insurers to Cover Sex Changes, Not Detransitions
It also would allow abortions and transgender modifications for minors without parental consent, and make the state a gender-surgery sanctuary for children
Some Oregon lawmakers are outraged about a measure requiring insurance coverage for gender changes for transgenders—without requiring coverage to “detransition” those who change their minds.
But what makes them even more upset is that it would allow children to “transition” without requiring parental knowledge and consent.
“I’ve got transgender people who think it’s crazy what we’re doing to kids” who aren’t happy with their biological sex and want to make an aesthetic change, said Oregon state Rep. Ed Diehl, a Republican.
“Lesbians, gay men, just hardcore leftists—these are all Oregonians. And they’re saying this is crazy. This makes no sense to be doing this to our children.”
Oregon’s House Bill 2002 has passed the state House and is now in the state Senate, where Republican senators have walked out to try to prevent its passage, Diehl said.
If passed into law, the measure also would allow abortion for children of any age without parental knowledge and would make Oregon a sex-change surgery sanctuary state for minors.
“They could have written this so many different ways to acknowledge what parents believe they have a constitutional right for, which is to direct the care and upbringing of their child,” Diehl told The Epoch Times. “But they wrote it without any consideration of that at all.”
The proposed bill states that “gender-affirming treatment” means a “procedure, service, drug, device, or product that a physical or behavioral health care provider prescribes to treat” when there’s a person’s “gender identity” and “sex assignment at birth” are different.
The bill mandates that health benefit plans may not “deny or limit coverage” for “gender-affirming treatment.”
But the bill’s text doesn’t mandate coverage for people who want to undo their sex-change surgeries and treatments.
“The bill, the way it’s written, is very clear” that it doesn’t mandate that kind of coverage, Diehl said.
Meaningless Words
Diehl pointed this out in the House of Representatives in April, asking for an amendment to the bill.
After that, the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services sent him a letter saying that Oregon law defines “gender identity” as “an individual’s gender-related identity, appearance, expression or behavior, regardless of whether the identity, appearance, expression or behavior differs from that associated with the gender assigned to the individual at birth.”
Diehl posted the relevant chapter of law on Twitter, and with it, asked, “If your ‘gender-related identity’ is male, and your ‘appearance’ is female, what is your “gender identity”?
The definition of is so broad, it’s meaningless, he said.
“In one case, they’re saying the incongruence is between how you feel and your biology. And in the other case, the incongruence is between how you appear and your biology.”
Diehl proposed an amendment to the bill covering health care for detransitioners, but House Democrats voted it down, he said. Committee chair Rep. Rob Nosse (D) also opposed the measure, Diehl said.
“The chair told me, ‘My people don’t like this. It’s very controversial. I don’t want you to bring it up,’” Diehl said.
Bill Says Parents Don’t Need to Know
On transgenderism and abortion, HB 2002 puts parents out of the loop, Diehl noted.
“A minor of any age may give consent, without the consent of a parent or guardian of the minor, to receive reproductive health care information and services,” the bill reads.
The bill suggests that children as young as 15 could choose to be sterilized.
“‘Reproductive health care’ does not include the voluntary sterilization of a minor under 15 years of age,” the bill reads.
The bill is especially troubling because it may help cloak sex trafficking or other sexual abuse, Diehl said. Most 10-year-old girls aren’t getting pregnant because they’re interested in having sex, he said.
“Let’s say you’re a young girl—you’re being trafficked and sexually abused [and] your abuser brings you in and tells you, ‘Tell them exactly what they want to hear, [that] my 14-year-old boyfriend got me pregnant.’ And they go in, and they have an abortion,” Diehl said.
Nothing in the bill requires an investigation if a very young girl gets pregnant and wants an abortion, and that’s a problem, Diehl said.
HB 2002 also would allow children as young as 15 to make medical decisions on transgender surgery without parental knowledge or consent. The law would allow children to use their parents’ insurance for the procedures.
“The age of medical consent in Oregon is 15,” Diehl said. “A 15-year-old is not in a position to provide informed consent on medications and surgeries that are permanently life-altering.”
Finally, the bill guts parental rights in other states, Diehl said.
If children travel to Oregon to get abortions and sex-change surgeries, the bill protects doctors who do the procedures from prosecution under the laws of other states.
Transitions Funded by Taxpayers
The Oregon Health Authority reports that 7,842 people have received sex-change treatments in 2022 from Medicaid insurance, paid with state and federal taxpayers’ dollars, according to an email to Diehl reviewed by The Epoch Times.
In 2022, 1,218 of those sex-change patients were under the age of 18. The cost of care was more than $2.3 million, an Oregon Health Authority report shows.
There’s one place the bill offers parents the ability to do whatever they want, Diehl said.
Currently, it’s a crime in Oregon to conceal “the corpse of a newborn child with intent to conceal the fact of its birth or to prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive,” according to an existing state law.
HB 2002 would remove that language, making it so concealing an infant’s death wouldn’t be a crime.
Partisan Battle
Twenty-two Democrats in the state House sponsored the bill, and 17 Democrats in the Senate also sponsored the bill. But Republican senators are trying to stop its passage.
Oregon’s legislative bodies require two-thirds of their members to be present for legislation to be passed. So to block a vote on the bill, Republicans walked out of the Oregon state Senate on May 3, Diehl said.
Twelve days later, 12 Republican senators refuse to return to the chamber, putting all legislative business on hold.
At a press conference on May 4, Republicans said they walked out because HB 2002 isn’t written at an eight-grade reading level—a requirement of all Oregon laws.
“Unfortunately, what has happened, is the law that passed in 1979, at some point stopped being followed,” said Sen. Tim Knopp, a Republic and the senate minority leader, in a press conference. “Not following a law is not an excuse for continuing to break the law.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Knopp for comment. He did not immediately respond.
Most Oregon laws fail to pass this reading test, Diehl said, and the boycott is about stopping HB 2002.
“I know that they want this bill to die.”
