Utah considers ban on procedures to change minors' gender

Those testifying before the committee included patient advocate Chloe Cole. A native of California, Cole began to transition to a male at the age of 12 and later changed her mind. Now a young adult working for Do No Harm, Cole has been traveling the country to speak against surgeries and medications for people with gender dysphoria.

“That last time I was here, I spoke about some of the consequences for my health,” Cole told lawmakers. “Almost none of those complications have gone away since. Some have even worsened over the years.”

Cole said “there have been multiple instances over the years” where her scars burst into open wounds with no explanation or help from medical professionals.

“I’m not just a one-off experience,” Cole told lawmakers. “There is a rapidly growing community of thousands of men and women and boys and girls who end up regretting their transition, and drugs have destroyed their bones and their joints.”

According to Cole, “no amount of terribly conducted studies or institutionally abused children being used as pawns for an ideology is going to refute reality.”  In her opinion, the “very basis of so-called gender affirming care is a lie.”  

Cole also called it fraudulent.

“Male and female are not feelings,” Cole told lawmakers. “Sex is not a feeling, but an immutable and born characteristic, and it cannot be changed by mutilation or chemical castration. And there is no such thing as a transgender child because no child is born in the wrong body. But if you try to change a child’s sex through cruel and experimental drugs and butchery, you are going to leave them scarred for life.”

Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer with Do No Harm, also appeared before lawmakers.

In his remarks, Miceli spoke against a 2025 report from the Department of Health and Human Services of Utah that was called for in 2023 when Senate Bill 16 was passed and set a moratorium on pediatric medical transition for minors who had not yet been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

“One part of that piece of legislation was to have a systematic evidence review done of the state of evidence related to hormones being used as sex change procedures in minors, and I must say it's just terribly unreliable,” Miceli told The Center Square prior to Tuesday’s committee hearing. “If folks are going to be making determinations of how to proceed with pediatric medical transition, it really makes a lot more sense to look at the Cass Review or the U.S. HHS review in November of last year.”

On its website, Do No Harm has referred to the Cass review as “an exhaustive review of gender medical services in the United Kingdom that found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender-distressed children.

Many who are committed to so-called “gender-affirming care” have attempted to downplay its findings, according to Do No Harm.

HHS, meanwhile, has called gender surgeries and medications “unnecessary procedures” that carry “long-term health risks.”

Pointing to these reports in the hearing, Miceli told lawmakers Tuesday that they provide a “far more methodologically sound and transparent assessment of the evidence.”

Among those urging committee members not to pass HB 174 were David Torrey of Salt Lake City.

“These bills tell me the care I rely on can be questioned, restricted, or taken away at any time,” said Torrey. “They force me to live with uncertainty and fear about whether the state will interfere with decisions I make with my doctors about my own body. That fear is constant. It affects my mental health, my sense of safety and my ability to plan my life here in Utah.”

Dr. Collin Kuhn, a clinical child and adolescent psychologist, also urged lawmakers to not approve HB 174.

“What we see with the anti-trans laws, and what they cause, is up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts,” Kuhn told lawmakers.