Less than a day after the shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee elementary school was linked by at least one media outlet to a recent state law regarding transgender issues.
According to one ABC News contributor, the state’s policies played a role in the attack. The network’s Terry Moran referenced a recent bill signed into law.
With a rhetorical wink and nudge, ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran blames Tennessee Republicans and Christians for six of their own being murdered today by a transgender former student pic.twitter.com/od1qEP7gAj
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 27, 2023
The contributor said on air following the shooting that “the state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors.”
The suspect is Audrey Hale, who was reportedly transgender.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a bill Mar. 2 that barred children from undergoing most physical or hormonal gender reassignment treatment within the state.
The bill passed with a large majority in the legislature. The new law becomes effective in the summer of 2022 and minors currently undergoing such treatments could do so in the state until March 2024.
The new law prevents most treatments that attempt to enable “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the immutable characteristics of the reproductive system that define the minor as male or female, as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”
Tennessee is currently considering a bill that bases legal status on characteristics “as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”
Moran gained significant attention after his comments related to the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning Roe v. Wade, stating that the decision changed “the status of American women as citizens.”
Moran was not the only public figure to bring up politics in the aftermath of the shooting that left three children and three adults dead.
At an unrelated women’s business summit, President Joe Biden used the opportunity to call for new gun control. He broke from his remarks to call on Congress to pass a renewed assault weapons ban.
“It’s about time that we begin to make some more progress,” the president said.
