Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed legislation last month that promised to save children in the state from sex-change mutilations and keep men out of women's sports. Unsatisfied with the governor's substitutive executive order and unwilling to give him the last word, Republican lawmakers have worked to surmount DeWine's veto.

Lawmakers in the Ohio House successfully voted on Jan. 10 to override DeWine's veto. On Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate followed suit, passing the law in a landslide 24-8 vote. They did so without the support of Republican state Sen. Nathan Manning, whose term ends in 2026.

Ohio has, as a result, joined over 20 other states that protect children from confusion-affirming medical interventions.

The law

HB 68 contains both the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation Act and the Save Women's Sports Act.

Like DeWine's Executive Order 2024-01D, the SAFE Act bars physicians from performing sex-change surgeries on minors; however, it goes much farther to protect children.

The law prohibits prescribing minors ruinous cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers "for the purpose of assisting the minor individual with gender transition" as well as aiding or abetting in such mutilations and prescriptions.

Blaze News previously noted that the SAFE Act also bars courts from denying or limiting parents' rights and responsibilities or parenting time based on their decision to:

• "refer to and raise the child in a manner consistent with the child's biological sex";
• "decline to consent to the child receiving gender transition services"; or
• "decline to consent to the child receiving counseling or other mental health services for the purpose of affirming the child's perception of the child's gender or sex, if the child's perception is inconsistent with the child's biological sex."

The Save Women's Sports Act goes one step farther in countering the material and structural impact of social constructivism, requiring that interscholastic athletic teams be properly sex-segregated unless otherwise qualified as co-ed.

The Associated Press indicated the law is expected to take effect in roughly 90 days.

Children who went under the knife or were subjected to sterilizing drugs before the law could protect them will be permitted to continue their treatment. Hermaphrodites have also been granted exceptions.

Common sense

"The Ohio Senate deserves to be commended today for its commitment to protecting women and children by overriding the Governor's veto of House Bill 68," said the SAFE Act's initial sponsor, state Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery). "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 and that women are no long subject to men invading their spaces."

Click was gracious in victory, suggesting that DeWine "acted from his heart."

"I continue to feel that with more time and opportunity it may have been possible for the governor to share in our understanding of this vital issue," continued Click. "Nevertheless, he did what he felt was right, as he should. The legislature, however, felt just as strongly if not more so that HB 68 was imperative to save lives, uphold medical ethics, and reaffirm women's rights."

"The citizens of Ohio were unequivocal in their demand that the legislature act and we did. The system worked," added Click.

Ahead of the override, the Ohio Senate Republicans cited recent polls indicating the general public was behind them in championing legislation such as HB 68.

A HarrixX poll conducted last year for Deseret News found that 61% of all voters said sex changes should be banned for minors.

The previous year, a Trafalgar Group survey showed that "78.7 percent of voters believe underage minors should be required to wait until they are adults to legally use puberty blockers and undergo permanent sex-change procedures." Even a majority of Democrats indicated prospective victims should wait until adulthood before undergoing medical interventions.

A Washington Post-KFF poll published last year revealed that 68% of U.S. adults opposed the provision of puberty blockers to children ages 10-14; 58% opposed hormone treatments for teens ages 15-17.

Anger and harm

LGBT activists are furious over the legislative expression of the will of Ohioans.

Siobhan Boyd-Nelson, the executive director of the radical activist group Equality Ohio, claimed in a Wednesday statement, "Lawmakers have made it clear that they are more concerned with protecting their political aspirations than protecting children, protecting women, or tackling the numerous pressing issues Ohioans are actually facing."

The Human Rights Campaign, a mammoth LGBT lobbying outfit, called the vote "shameful" and threatened, "This isn't over."

HRC campaign president Kelley Robinson stated, "These legislators have abdicated their responsibility to do what's right for the Ohioans they represent, casting votes that they know full well will harm innocent children, all to appease the leader of the MAGA agenda."

While various activists have accused GOP lawmakers of exposing confused children to harm, it appears the treatments they have just banned pose the real danger.

Blaze News previously reported that prominent physicians admitted during a September 2022 educational session conducted by the the World Professional Association for Transgender Health that puberty blockers can have disastrous effects on minors, including infertility, bone loss, and brain development disruptions.

A study published in September 2022 in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy revealed that puberty blockers deplete victims' bone density, hamper their cognitive development, and produce a myriad of harmful emotional effects.

A September 2023 study published in the European Journal of Endocrinology revealed that male transvestites taking feminizing hormones are 93% more likely to suffer heart disease than other males. Female transvestites taking testosterone are 63% more likely to suffer heart disease than other females.

The American College of Cardiology confirmed last year that "people with gender dysphoria taking hormone replacements as part of gender affirmation therapy face a substantially increased risk of serious cardiac events, including stroke, heart attack and pulmonary embolism."

Although captive to LGBT ideology, the World Health Organization recently admitted that the evidence concerning "longer-term outcomes of gender affirming care for children and adolescents" is "limited and variable."

Walid Farhat, chief of pediatric urology at the UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health, indicated in an April 2023 grant application that research on the impacts of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers is "severely lacking."

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