The Ohio Senate on Wednesday took a buzzsaw to the buzzword of “gender-affirming care.”
The Senate voted 23-9 to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill to ban medical care for minors who believe they want to change their gender in a bill that also says men who claim they are women cannot play on women’s school sports teams.
Ohio’s state House overrode the veto 65-28 earlier this month. The law will take effect in 90 days, according to NBC.
The law allows state licensing boards to penalize health care providers who provide puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors, although it allows those already receiving those drugs to continue getting them.
Students who believe that a transgender athlete has deprived them of an athletic opportunity can sue the school, school district or other organization that might regulate a sport.
“Despite what the liberals say, gender is not assigned at birth, but rather from the moment of conception, you are either male or you are female,” Republican Sen. Kristina Roegner said, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
“There is no such thing as gender-affirming care. You can’t affirm something that doesn’t exist,” she said.
Roegner said all the words in the world will not change biology.
“There are men and there are women and there are boys and there are girls and they are different,” she said, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Is this the right move?
“Gender is not fluid. There is no such thing as a gender spectrum,” she claimed.
As noted by NBC, Roegner said that treating someone for gender dysphoria, the conflict between a person’s gender and what they might think they are, “creates, as you can imagine, a permanent patient.”
“This is quite a profit center for those hospitals pushing these procedures to teenagers, children. They’re not capable of making life-altering decisions,” she said.
The bill’s House sponsor, Republican state Rep. Gary Click, has said that parents are “being manipulated by the physicians,” according to The New York Times.
DeWine vetoed the bill, saying that if it were to become law, “Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.”
“We tell parents what to do all the time. This isn’t any different, ” Republican state Sen. Steve Huffman said, citing laws that touch on driving, smoking and truancy, according to WOSU-FM.
Huffman noted the bill has a limited scope.
“We’re not outlawing all trans in the state of Ohio. We’re just asking them to wait till you’re 18, wait till you have the ability to make the decision,” he said.
