Ohio has passed a ban on transgender drugs and surgeries for children under 18 — and a ban on trans youth from participating in girls’ sports.
The state Legislature today overrode the governor’s veto to clear the way for a ban on prescribing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender surgery for minors.
The bill will go into effect in the next 90 days, with doctors who continue to provide care to minors at risk of losing their medical licenses.
Ohio has become the 23rd state to ban transgender care for minors, amid a wave of bills passed by Republicans in recent years. It also marks the 24th time that trans girls from high school and college sports have been banned.
Pictured above is Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who vetoed the legislation. His veto has now been overridden
Sponsors of the bill said this was necessary because parents were being “manipulated” by doctors into getting transgender care for their children.
But campaigners hit back at the move, arguing that politicians should not be involved in families’ ‘private medical decisions’.
Medical bodies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics say children should be offered gender-affirming care, and that withholding it amounts to “state-sanctioned neglect and emotional abuse.”
But health care experts in other countries have dismissed the leading organizations’ comments as unethical and irresponsible, focusing more on the politics of the moment than on medicine.
The US has become a political outlier among Western countries in this regard, while other countries including France, Britain and Sweden are all interrupting puberty by blocking drugs and surgeries on minors, amid concerns about the mental and physical long-term consequences.
The editor of a prestigious medical journal also warned early last year that American children with gender dysphoria were being taken to surgeries without psychological support.
Dr. Kamran Abbasi, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, also said the approach taken by US doctors was “not commensurate with the strength of the evidence”.
There has also been a wave of American children who were rushed into gender confirmation surgery and said they wanted the treatments reversed.
Among them was a young man, known only as Kobe, who said he bitterly regretted being castrated by doctors after realizing he was just an “effeminate” gay boy who liked to play with Barbies — instead of with a woman – and Kayla Lovdahl of California, who is suing Kaiser Permanente, claiming she was ‘pushed’ into transitioning into a man and having surgery to remove her breasts.
The Ohio bill passed both the Republican-controlled House and Senate in December but was subsequently vetoed by Governor Mike DeWine of the same party.
After speaking to families with transgender children, he said the bill should not pass because it was like the state was saying it “knew better” than doctors and parents about what is best for a child.
He was then attacked by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who claimed the governor had “fallen to the radical left.” He urged the state to overturn the veto.
An Ohio governor’s veto can be overturned if three-fifths of both the Senate and House of Representatives vote in favor of the measure.
The House voted 65-28 to override the veto on January 10, and the Senate approved the measure today by a vote of 23-9.
The state has about 8,500 children ages 13 to 17 who identify as transgender, according to estimates from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.
There are also about 46,500 adults living in the state who identify as transgender, they say.
Estimates show that rates of gender dysphoria have soared in every state but one in recent years – with children under 18 now making up a fifth of all new cases each year.
The biggest increases were recorded in Virginia, Indiana and Utah, where interest rates more than tripled in the five years from 2018 to 2022, which are Republican states.
Families who have raised concerns about Ohio’s ban include 10-year-old transgender girl in the state Astrid Burkle — who is receiving hormone replacement therapy.
Speak with ABC newsshe said she was angry that “mean” people were trying to prevent the treatments.
“It was very frustrating at times,” Astrid said, “because there are so many people who are just really mean.”
Her mother and father said the local community was supportive, but her sister Abs said they may have to leave Ohio if her treatment is blocked.