Alabama passed a law making it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison for prescribing gender- affirming treatment to anyone under 19. The age of consent in Alabama is 16. So at 18, you can serve in the military, vote, take hormonal birth control, take testosterone supplements if you are male, but if a doctor prescribes hormones not concordant with your gender at birth, the doctor could go to jail for up to 10 years. Am I wrong or is this seriously messed up? Will doctors be reluctant to prescribe puberty blockers for children with precocious puberty because they are afraid of going to jail?
" How can Alabama restrict gender-affirming treatment for adults?"
Easy. Alabama’s legislature is controlled by the Republican Party, and everyone knows that the Republican Party is the Party of EVIL.
No, it’s seriously messed up.
The hypocrisy is that this was pushed by the same people who complain about the country becoming a nanny state.
To answer the question:
Probably the same way that states can restrict alcohol use by adults.
You’re not wrong: they criminalize the supply. They can do that as part of their power regulating the market.
That said, the alcohol prohibition is a joke–so poorly enforced that most adults don’t follow it, and suppliers only do the minimum required. Because of that, it’s hard to organize people to really fight against it. And alcohol is primarily recreational, while this is about withholding FDA approved treatments, treatments that literally save lives.
For what it’s worth, in Alabama the age if majority is 19. Federal law supersedes that on things like voting, but I couldn’t buy cigarettes there till I was 19.
In Mississippi, it’s still 21.
They’re just borrowing from the playbook of the anti-abortion crowd. They can’t make abortion actually illegal, but they can make regulations surrounding abortion so burdensome that it’s almost impossible to open or run an abortion clinic. So, sure, in theory, abortion is legal, but lots of women can’t find a place to actually have an abortion.