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This Amendment Could Seriously Hurt Trans People in Iowa

Activists are calling on the state's governor to reject the amendment.

Transgender activists in Iowa are urging Gov. Kim Reynolds to shoot down an amendment to a Health and Human Services (HHS) budget bill that would strip government funding for gender-confirming surgeries across the state.

According to local news outlet KCCI Des Moines, trans advocates and allies demonstrated outside Reynolds' office this Monday, hoping to confront the Governor directly about the implications of the amendment. Tobias Gurl, a trans activist who helped organize the protest, told KCCI that the add-on to the bill is an underhanded effort by Reynolds and other Republicans to hurt trans and gender non-conforming Iowans.

The health care bill in question has already passed through Iowa's legislature. Now, it's up to Reynolds (pictured below) to sign it.

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

DES MOINES, IA - NOVEMBER 06: Incumbent Republican candidate for Iowa's Governor Kim Reynolds speaks as she celebrates her re-election during Iowa's GOP Election Night on November 6, 2018 in Des Moines, Iowa. Reynolds defeated her challenger Democratic candidate Fred Hubbell in Tuesday's midterm election. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

"She and her staff will not tell us when the bill will be signed,” Gurl said. “We believe it is her obligation to meet with us over this.”

Aiden Vasquez, a trans man from Davenport, Iowa, told the Des Moines Register that the amendment felt like he's "been kicked in the face."

The 51-year-old Medicaid recipient has been scheduled for a phalloplasty, or bottom surgery, with a local doctor for months. If Reynolds signs the amended bill into law, he'll no longer be able to afford the surgery.

"I had been in a dark depression for about six months, but when I left [my doctor's] office with that referral, it felt like she had taken my hand and pulled me out of this hole I had been living in,” Vasquez told the Register. “Now, it’s like they shoved me back in and threw dirt over top of me."

Aidan Zinger, another transgender Iowan, pointed out that many transgender people of color in Iowa and nationwide rely on federally funded health care programs, adding that gender-affirming surgeries—including top and bottom surgery—are life-saving procedures for trans people.

"They want to be able to get these life-affirming surgeries because it alleviates their pain and it's lifesaving for them," Zinger said.

Zinger's claims have been backed up again and again, although on a national level, the current administration seems to agree with the provisions of this amendment.

In the Trump administration's latest jab at transgender Americans, officials at HHS are gearing up to interpret civil rights law in a trans-exclusionary way, effectively stripping the Affordable Care Act’s trans-inclusive nondiscrimination protections.

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