On that floor, the debate was never really about medicine; it was about control, about whose fears are granted the force of law and whose pain is treated as collateral damage. Lawmakers spoke as if certainty were a shield, as if distant hypotheticals outweighed the trembling voices of parents and the quiet courage of teenagers asking simply to be believed. Each speech turned complex lives into props, flattening families into archetypes that fit a prewritten script.
Whatever happens to the bill itself, the fallout has already begun. Trust, once fractured, is hard to rebuild: trust in doctors who now must weigh care against criminalization, in parents who are told love might be abuse, and in institutions that debate young people’s existence like an abstract policy question. The echoes from that vote will follow these kids into clinics, classrooms, and late-night conversations where they wonder if their country has already decided who they are allowed to be.
