Ohioans are waiting to see whether their Republican governor is willing to risk unpopularity with the radical left by ratifying Republican state Rep. Gary Click's House Bill 68, which would uphold parental rights, protect girls' sports, and spare minors in the state from irreversible genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers.
Gov. Mike DeWine has until Friday to make up his mind. A failure to either sign or veto the bill will mean the SAFE Act will go into effect immediately.
Both chambers of the Ohio legislature passed HB68, otherwise known as the "Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act," in decisive votes earlier this month — 62-27 in the House and 24-8 in the Senate.
Republican state Sen. Nathan Manning, whose term ends in 2026, was the lone Republican who joined Democrats in opposing the legislation.
The SAFE Act would bar physicians from performing sex-change surgeries on minors; prescribing minors ruinous cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers "for the purpose of assisting the minor individual with gender transition"; and aiding or abetting in such mutilations and prescriptions.
Reality-averse minors already prescribed a cocktail of sterilizing dysphoria-affirming drugs at the time the law goes into effect would be permitted to continue their treatment. The act also makes exceptions for genuine hermaphrodites.
The SAFE Act would further prohibit health professionals from diagnosing or treating minors who present "for the diagnosis or treatment of a gender-related condition" without first getting the consent of at least one of the minor's parents or the minor's guardian.
The legislation also bars courts from denying or limiting a parent's parental rights and responsibilities or parenting time based on their decision to
Extra to affirming parental rights and protecting adolescents from irreversible medical experimentation, HB68 requires that interscholastic athletic teams be properly sex-segregated unless otherwise qualified as co-ed. Organizers for interscholastic competitions would be precluded from knowingly allowing transvestites to play among members of the opposite sex.
The act stressed the dangers of so-called "gender reassignment surgery," the lack of long-term longitudinal studies evaluating the risks of the corresponding pharmaceuticals, and the tendency for gender-dysphoric children to grow out of their confusion without needing medical interventions.
In addition to parents, conservative voters, and faith groups, victims of sex-change procedures were among the supporters of the bill. Detransitioner Chloe Cole, mutilated by health professionals while an adolescent, indicated in her witness statement that the SAFE Act might spare other minors from similarly being left permanently disfigured.
Hundreds of LGBT activists and representatives of health outfits that might stand to gain from future generations of prospective patients testified in opposition to the bill, including activists from the Ohio Psychological Association, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Equality Ohio, Northwest Ohio Trans Advocacy, and the Akron Children's Hospital.
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman was unfazed by the opposition, stating, "So we don’t make laws just for the hundreds of people that come and testify. We make laws for over 11 million people," reported Cleveland.com.
Should the SAFE Act go into effect, Ohio would join over 20 other states that similarly protect children from the ravages of sex-change mutilations.
DeWine, whose term does not end until 2027, does not appear to regard the SAFE Act as a no-brainer, having embarked on a soul-searching tour of health facilities and the homes of families impacted by confusion-affirming treatments in recent weeks, reported the Associated Press.
"I'm trying to learn as much as I can to make a good decision," said DeWine.
"We're dealing with children who are going through a challenging time, families that are going through a challenging time," DeWine said last week. "I want, the best I can, to get it right."
LGBT activists and other leftists have been pressuring DeWine to veto the bill.
Despite the legislation shoring up parental rights, the ACLU of Ohio claims in its campaign letter to DeWine that "HB 68 infiltrates a family's right to make important medical decisions that should only involve their medical providers."
The ACLU of Ohio further noted, "HB 68 would severely damage the well-being of LGBTQ+ youth, while also jeopardizing the trust between providers and patients, putting physicians’ medical practices at risk."
When pressed this week about whether he's made up his mind, a spokesman for DeWine told the Daily Caller, "The governor continues to review the bill."
State Rep. Gary Click said he would not "characterize the governor as hesitating" but rather as "performing due diligence."
"I respect that he is listening to all sides, especially when I know the facts are in our favor. The facts are on our side. The polls are on our side," Glick told the Daily Caller. "The legislature passed HB 68 with an overwhelming majority. I am confident that when the governor considers the information before him he will do the right thing, which is to sign the bill."
Most Ohioans appear to be aligned with conservatives on the issues addressed in the SAFE Act.
A Baldwin Wallace University poll conducted last year found that roughly 66% of registered Ohio voters opposed letting medical professionals "provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition."
A July poll by Suffolk University and the USA Today network found that 70% of registered Ohio voters were opposed to allowing male transvestites using hormones to play on female teams.
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Transgender activist Willow Breshears claimed that states banning "gender-affirming care" for transgender kids will cause a surge in child deaths.
In a Monday report from USA Today, 18-year-old Breshears — who grew up a Baptist in rural Arkansas — said that legislators have no place in policing transgender children's bodies.
Breshears recently testified before state lawmakers to stop the passage of a newly proposed state law that bans health care providers form providing "gender-affirming care" to youth under the age of 18.
Such "gender-affirming care" includes puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
Last week, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) vetoed a bill that would have made the state the first to ban gender-affirming medical care for youth under the age of 18 — even with parental consent.
Hutchinson at the time said that the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act, was "a vast government overreach."
A day later, the legislature overrode Hutchinson's veto. The House voted 71-24 and the Senate 25-8.
The SAFE Act, according to the outlet, "also prohibits physicians from referring patients to other providers and, in what some call a particularly heinous move, includes no grandfather clause for youth already under treatment."
"The only people who should have that say is that transgender person, their family, and their doctors," Breshears insisted. "This is not a place for legislators to step into."
Breshears, who began a transgender journey at the age of 13 with hormone therapy and came out as gay at 12, said that she believes she might not be alive today if she hadn't been allowed to transition at such a young age.
"I had heard the word 'transgender' a couple times before that, but never really in a positive way," said Breshears. "That's what really helped me flourish. I was a woman, but I never really knew the words to describe that."
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said that preventing transgender children from transitioning at their leisure raises the risk of serious mental health issues among that population.
"There's only so many people taking puberty blockers in Arkansas," he said. "But every single transgender person is feeling the effect of this attack. It's the government, pure and simple, saying 'You don't belong.' It's such an antagonistic and heartless message to send."
Arkansas Rep. Deborah Ferguson (D) has also spoken out against the bill, saying that at least four dozen Arkansas youth receiving hormone therapy have reportedly attempted to commit suicide.
"It is unfortunate that the makeup of our legislature has changed to the extent that we are weaponizing religion to discriminate agains this small minority," Fergon said.
According to the outlet, "Advocates say access to gender-affirming medical care is linked with better mental health, including a lower incidence of suicidal thoughts. Bills denying such care have been condemned by major medical groups around the country, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association."
Christa and Jeff White, the parents of a 12-year-old transgender daughter, said that they worry for their daughter's mental health as a transgender youth.
"The idea that this could put my daughter in danger is not OK with me," said Christa White, a stay-at-home mom and women's rights activist. "This is potentially devastating, not just to our child, but to all transgender children undergoing these treatments. Children will die."
The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to fight the Arkansas law, according to the report.
The Human Rights Campaign also blasted the law as a "cruel and shameful way for legislators to score political points by targeting transgender youth who are simply trying to navigate their adolescence."
If the law were unconstitutional, the judge wrote, '[a]ny person — including a minor — would be able to obtain anything from meth, to ecstasy, to abortion so long as a single medical professional were willing to recommend it.'
The SAFE Act would make Missouri the latest state to ban the horrific practices of mutilative transgender surgeries and chemical castration on children.
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