Senate passes defense policy bill that bans gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members

By Clare Foran and Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — The Senate voted on Wednesday to pass a critical defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a ban against gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members – a provision pushed by Republicans that sparked anger from Democrats.

The legislation will next be sent to President Joe Biden after the measure passed the GOP-led House last week. The White House hasn’t said whether Biden will sign the bill.

The legislation, which was the result of a bipartisan compromise, includes a provision that would prevent the military’s health program, TRICARE, from covering gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members. The effort to prohibit these treatments to children has overshadowed some of the bipartisan provisions of the bill, including a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members.

The NDAA, which sets the policy agenda and authorizes funding for the Department of Defense annually, typically passes with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Some Democrats said they would not vote for the legislation this year as a result of the ban on gender-affirming care, while others said that although they opposed the provision, they would still vote for the sweeping bill, citing other provisions they supported, like pay raises for service members. A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin put forward an amendment to strip out the ban, but the push was unsuccessful.

Gender-affirming care is a multidisciplinary approach that includes medically necessary and scientific evidence-based practices to help a person safely transition from their assigned gender – the one a clinician assigned them at birth, based mostly on anatomic characteristics – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which the person wants to be known.

The issue has become deeply polarizing, and one Republican candidates ran on in this year’s election, while some Democrats have acknowledged since their disappointing results in November that the party has work to do to improve its position on culture war issues.

CNN’s Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

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