Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — Two of several bills restricting the practice of transgender health care by advocates, also known as gender-affirming care, have cleared their first legislation.
On Monday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, called on lawmakers to pass a bill banning transgender medical procedures on minors, and on Wednesday, the Oklahoma Senate Rules Committee issued a statement on the matter. Two bills were passed by the committee with 16 votes. 2.
“We have to protect the most vulnerable children,” Stitt said. “Minors can’t vote, they can’t buy alcohol, they can’t buy cigarettes. Oklahoma shouldn’t allow minors to have permanent gender reassignment surgery. We are asking Congress to pass legislation to ban all gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for minors.”
The Senate Rules Committee passed SB613 and SB129 Wednesday morning.
SB613 makes it illegal for medical professionals to perform gender-changing surgery on children and limits the use of sex reassignment-related drugs currently being used on children, such as puberty blockers.
State Senator Julie Daniels (Republican, Bartlesville) created a bill that does not address the debate about mental health care and gender, and that medical professionals who work with children with these feelings are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. He said that he may be prescribed drugs for
“We are talking about the irreversible medical transition of children under the age of 18. In this state we need to hit this pause button and allow these children to mature.” I believe.
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Democrats argue that the bill strips away the right of parents to seek proper medical care for their children, even if they’ve been to the doctor they’ve been seeing all their lives, and they’re willing to prove gender dysphoria. and objected. People who feel that their body does not match their biological gender.
State Senator Julia Kurt (D-Oklahoma City) called this “governmental interference in the worst possible way” and the state should interfere with other ways people are choosing to raise their children. I asked.
SB129 also passed 16-2 along the party line, but changed dramatically from the original language. Originally, SB129 would have banned sex reassignment surgery until the age of 26. The author, Senator David Bullard (R-Durant), said that the brain had stopped developing and was thinking clearly without the emotional and developmental changes that occur in humans up to that point. .
But in addition to legal challenges, Republican lawmakers have the potential to waste the bill and set a bad precedent for how states view adults from children. There were concerns that states were beginning to violate the definition of an adult after the age of 18.
SB129 was eventually rewritten to explain that public funds will not be used for medical needs related to gender reassignment or transgender medical care.
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The move to limit child sex reassignment actually began during the special legislative session last fall. Her OU Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City was told it could receive funding to continue her child’s sex reassignment surgery. Two of her five children who underwent sex reassignment surgery of some sort in recent years, along with their families, have undergone major changes at an early age when they are easily influenced by social media and peer pressure. He publicly expressed regret for what he had done. , social pressure, and other factors such as changes in mid-adolescent feelings about who one is sexually. What Republicans believe proves their claim that children are not ready for this kind of change until after puberty.
“The science on this is unclear and a subject of great debate,” Daniels said during the discussion. She also noted that she had spoken to two pediatricians in her district. .
