You wouldn’t think lawmakers would have to be the ones to tell medical professionals and parents that mutilating their children to appease their fantasies is a bad idea, but that’s exactly what had to happen in Ohio, where Republican legislators in the House and Senate had to override a Republican governor’s veto to protect kids in the state.
On Wednesday, the Ohio Senate voted 23–9 to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of HB 68, a law that will ban “gender-affirming care” including surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy for minors, and will prevent men and boys who identify as female from competing in women’s sports. The vote makes Ohio the 22nd state to pass a law preventing doctors from practicing “gender-affirming care” on minors. The law will take effect in 90 days. (READ MORE: Beauty Survives the Left)
“The SAFE Act and Save Women’s Sports Act are the civil rights issues of our day, ensuring that children have the right to grow up intact,” state Rep. Gary Click, who helped sponsor the bill, said in a statement on Wednesday. “The legislature … felt … that HB 68 was imperative to save lives, uphold medical ethics, and reaffirm women’s rights.”
Official statement on the Ohio Senate’s Veto Override of #HB68 #SAFEAct #SaveWomensSports pic.twitter.com/15TKy3Y30U
— Rep Gary Click 🦎 (@clickforohio) January 24, 2024
DeWine, a Republican, vetoed the bill in December, arguing that puberty blockers and hormone therapy prevent kids from committing suicide. “Many parents have told me that their child would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from an Ohio children’s hospital. I have also been told, by those that are now grown adults, that but for this care, they would have taken their lives when they were teenagers,” he said in a statement.
DeWine came up with what he thought was a compromise. A week after his veto, he issued an executive order that banned so-called gender-reassignment surgeries for minors and required that kids who received any kind of hormone therapy or puberty blockers be seen by more doctors before receiving a prescription. However, the executive order didn’t address the lifelong consequences hormone therapy and puberty blockers have on the kids who take them, and it failed to protect women’s sports in any way.
Ohio’s Republican-majority legislature wasn’t about to accept a compromise. Two weeks ago, its House of Representatives voted to override the veto. (WATCH MORE: The Spectacle Ep. 62: Can Republicans Learn to Win in 2024?)
“It is hard to fathom that we live in a society that would tell children that they need drugs and scalpels to live their authentic lives or that treats women as second-class citizens in their own spaces. These are horrible, harmful, and hurtful messages for Ohio’s youth and it is remarkable that we would even need a law to affirm these common-sense policies,” Click said in a statement at the time.
Sen. Kristina Roegner, who sponsored the bill in Ohio’s Senate, pointed out ahead of Wednesday’s vote that “there is no such thing as a ‘gender spectrum’” or “gender-affirming care.” “You can’t affirm something that doesn’t exist,” she explained. She also pointed out that hospitals and doctors are incentivized to recommend irreversible procedures for minors since they create “a permanent patient.” Children, she said, aren’t “capable of making life-altering decisions.”
Meanwhile, transgender clinics and support groups claim that the legislature’s vote to override the veto will drive self-identifying transgender kids and their parents from the state. Dara Adkison, secretary of the board of TransOhio, told NBC News that families had already contacted the group to request help leaving the state.
“Their government is forcing them to uproot their lives,” she said. “They’re selling their homes, they’re changing jobs and careers and closing out all their savings. They’re closing their businesses, they’re leaving their medical practices.”
Ohio’s newest law does have a grandfather clause that will allow kids in the state who are already receiving treatment to continue doing so. That clause doesn’t apply to kids who have been traveling from out of state to receive treatment.
It’s not often that conservatives score this kind of win. It turns out that if Republicans refuse to accept compromises, they can actually make a difference.
