‘We cannot turn a blind eye’: Governor signs bill to end gender transitions at children’s hospital

Reagan Reese, DCNF

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law on Tuesday that prohibits funding for gender transition services for minors at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at OU Health, according to a press release from the Oklahoma governor’s office.

Senate Bill 3XX went into immediate effect and additionally invests nearly $40 million into improving children’s behavioral health care, according to the press release. The law comes after the children’s hospital announced it would stop providing “certain gender medicine services” to minors on Sept. 27.

“By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies,” Stitt said in a press release. “It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children.”

Under the law, funding cannot be used for “interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics, interventions to align the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity and medical therapies and medical intervention used to treat gender dysphoria.”

Previously, the hospital was offering “gender-affirming hormone therapy” and connecting minors with gender-affirming surgeons under its “Roy G. Biv Program,” the press release stated. The program also helped with legal name changes and “pausing puberty to further explore gender.”

Stitt signed a bill in March which prohibits biological men from competing in women’s sports. In April, Stitt signed Senate Bill 1100 into law which bans “non-binary” options on birth certificates, only allowing male and female as options.

“I am calling for the Legislature to ban all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors when they convene next session in February 2023,” Stitt said in the press release. “We cannot turn a blind eye to what’s happening all across our nation, and as governor I will not allow life-altering transition surgeries on minor children in the state of Oklahoma.”

Stitt’s office referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to their press release. Oklahoma Children’s Hospital did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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