Maine Democrats push 'totalitarian' rebuild of defeated 'transgender trafficking bill' — with national implications

Democratic lawmakers in Maine attempted to pass a radical bill earlier this year that threatened to allow the state to seize custody of children whose parents — both in and outside Maine — refused them sex-change mutilations and other irreversible medical interventions.

Following a successful pressure campaign led by the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit and some mild Republican pushback, LD 1735, dubbed the "transgender trafficking bill" by critics, was killed in committee.

Maine Democrats are evidently not finished with their apparent attempts to break up families, shield sex-change surgeons from consequence, and altogether codify gender ideology in the state. In fact, they have doubled down, rolling some of the most consequential elements of LD 1735 into a new bill, Democratic state Rep. Anne Perry's LD 227.

A state committee will consider whether to advance LD 227 Thursday, affording critics just one more day to make their opposition known and potentially stop the initiative in its tracks.

Overview

Courage Is a Habit president Alvin Lui told Blaze News, "This is the nastiest bill I've ever seen. Even worse than anything that I've seen come out of California. I never thought I would say that."

LD 227 — referred to by Lui and other critics as the "Transgender Trafficker Protection Act" — would prohibit "interference" with abortions or sex-change mutilations, protect medical practitioners from lawsuits, and conceal the known whereabouts of interstate child runaways from their parents, among other things.

Already 16 state attorneys general have threatened action against Maine if the bill passes, noting in a March 11 letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills that LD 227 "seeks to contravene the lawful policy choices of our States' citizens by imposing on the rest of the country Maine's views on hotly debated issues such as gender transition surgeries for children."

Extra to underscoring the federal implications and unconstitutional nature of the bill, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and the other attorneys general suggested LD 227 is animated by a "totalitarian impulse to stifle dissent and oppress dissenters."

If passed and ratified, then the fates of LD 227 and the children it would victimize might ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Courage Is a Habit has stressed that there is time left for Maine residents and other objectors to help sink it.

On Thursday, the following eight Democratic Maine lawmakers will determine whether to advance the bill in committee: Sens. Donna Bailey (D) and Cameron Reny (D), along with Reps. Poppy Arford (D), Anne Perry (D), Sally Cluchey (D), Anne-Marie Mastraccio (D), Kristi Michele Mathieson (D), and Jane Pringle (D).

Courage Is a Habit has created a simple form for individuals looking to share their thoughts about LD 227 with Maine lawmakers.

'Transgender Trafficker Protection Act'

According to a recent draft of LD 227, the bill would apparently:

• codify the legal right to sex-change mutilations and abortions without stipulating any age or time limits;
• hinder efforts by states and persons to take legal action against health professionals involved in the facilitation or execution of sex-change medical interventions and abortions, apparently even in the case of medical malpractice;
• spare health care practitioners from professional discipline based on crimes, civil actions, or convictions in other states for sex-change or abortion-related actions deemed acceptable in Maine;
• authorize persons targeted with criminal or administrative action for their hand in "engaging in or for aiding and assisting legally protected health care activity" to "bring a civil action in this State for damages, punitive damages and equitable relief" — ostensibly meaning surgeons could sue detransitioners who bring malpractice suits;
• prevent Maine law enforcement from notifying the parents of those child runaways said to be pursuing abortions or sex changes;
• enable virtually any adult to take a child across state lines to Maine for "gender-affirming care" even if the child is not their own or "incapacitated"; and
• prevent the arrest of persons "if the arrest is related to criminal liability that is based on legally protected health care activity or aiding and assisting legally protected health care activity."

"It's everything that LD 1735 was supposed to be, except it adds a bunch of other things," Lui told Blaze News.

For instance, Lui indicated LD 277 forces insurance companies to cover all sex-change procedures, but not the health care needs of detransitioners or therapy to resolve existing comorbidities before taking sterilizing sex-change drugs. It also "adds in protection for the transgender traffickers."

"So if somebody's blue-haired liberal aunt or some neighbor takes a child over to Maine, [the state] won't contact the parents — which was in the original transgender trafficking bill," continued Lui. "But now ... the parents can't sue. They can't say, 'Wait a minute, that adult has kidnapped my child to Maine so that they could get a surgery.'"

Republican state Rep. Laurel Libby recently confirmed that the blue-haired aunt from Lui's hypothetical who takes her "niece from another state against the parents' wishes would be allowed to do that. And Maine law enforcement would have their hands tied. Maine judiciary would have their hands tied — would not be able to actually help return that child to their lawful parents."

Libby emphasized that LD 227 is the "worst bill [she] has ever seen come through the legislature."

Federal implications and junk science

Attorney Joel Thornton, the COO and director of Advocacy for Child and Parental Rights Campaign, said LD 227 "is pretty outrageous as it extends the state's authority throughout the United States to protect what Maine is declaring to be the law in Maine, and effectively making it the law of the land to anyone who happens to be in Maine."

According to the letter from the opposed state attorneys general to Gov. Mills, "LD 227 not only purports to shield from liability those offering or aiding the provision of unlawful services to citizens located in our States — a provision Planned Parenthood asserts would 'safeguard' Maine providers and patients from 'out-of-state laws that ban or restrict care that is legal in Maine.'"

"The law also creates a private right of action for damages against law enforcement, prosecutors, and other officials in our States who are enforcing our own valid state laws, even laws whose constitutionality has been confirmed by federal appellate courts," continued the letter. "On top of that, LD 227 purports to block valid orders and judgments from our state courts enforcing laws upheld by federal appellate courts."

The attorneys general reduced Maine's proposed law as an unconstitutional and "novel effort at a state-sanctioned culture war litigation tourism."

Extra to likely running afoul of federal law, Lui highlighted how LD 227 relies on junk science, namely that given a gloss by the World Professional Association for Trangender Health.

The understanding of "gender-affirming health care" central to the legislation is, after all, defined in accordance with supposed expertise "in the field of gender-affirming care including in the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People ... published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health."

Blaze News recently noted that leaked internal documents reveal there are serious concerns behind closed doors at WPATH over the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of sex-change procedures as well as over the inability for children to provide informed consent for so-called "gender-affirming care."

The pseudo-scientific nature of "gender-affirming care" has become all the more clear in recent months:

• England's National Health Service banned puberty blockers for minors, highlighting both their dangers and a dearth of evidence to support their efficacy.
• Finland's leading child psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala told her government that the vast majority of kids will grow out of the delusion that their gender and sex are misaligned.
• A massive Finnish study published in the esteemed quarterly journal BMJ Mental Health concluded that "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk."

Blaze News reached out to the sponsor of LD 277, Demoratic state Rep. Anne Perry, for comment. She did not, however, provide a response by deadline.

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