Rep. Brad Paquette (R-Niles) and Sen. Thomas Albert (R-Lowell) introduced legislation on Wednesday that would prohibit gender transition procedures for minors. The three-bill package would prohibit health care providers from conducting hormone treatments, surgeries for sterilization, and surgeries that alter genital appearance on minors, with an exception for minors with medically verifiable disorders of sex development or those facing imminent danger from physical condition.

“It is time for the experimentation on children in the name of care to come to an end,” Paquette said. “Children are not born in the wrong body. No one has the right to maim a healthy child’s body to try to achieve the unachievable.”

Paquette and Albert’s legislative plan expands patients’ ability to seek damages for medical malpractice and would require health insurance providers to cover detransition costs, as they cover transition costs already. The introduction of the bill package came only six days after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a new comprehensive review of the evidence and best practices regarding gender dysphoria in minors, detailing serious concerns about puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. The operations and medications cited in the study would all be prohibited under Paquette and Albert’s proposal.

Paquette and Albert were joined on Wednesday by two celebrated proponents of ending so-called “gender affirming care,” Prisha Mosley and Jamie Reed. Mosley is a detransitioner living in Big Rapids whose story recently made national headlines. Reed is a whistleblower who exposed the realities of pediatric gender clinics after working as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

“It is critical that legislative bodies step in to protect children in this state form these dangerous and reckless practices,” Reed said at a press conference on Wednesday discussing Paquette’s legislation. “I was complicit in harming patients because the protocol itself harms patients. There is no safe or legal way to sterilize a child, and there is no safe way to medically disrupt a functioning endocrine system.”

The bill package on the House side was read in as House Bills 4466-4468 and referred the House Committee on Health Policy. The press conference at which Paquette, Albert, and Jamie Reed spoke is viewable on YouTube.