Two more states – Mississippi and Tennessee – this week passed bills protecting young children and adolescents from experimental and harmful “sex change” procedures.
On February 28, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed the Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures Act (HB 1125) into law. Then on March 2, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed SB 1 into law.
Mississippi’s HB 1125 prohibits any physician from doing the following to assist a minor with a “gender transition”:
- Prescribing or administering puberty-blocking drugs;
- Prescribing or administering cross-sex hormones;
- Performing gender reassignment surgeries.
Any violation of the law is considered “unprofessional conduct,” and any physician who violates HB 1125 is subject to having his or her medical license revoked.
In addition, the bill prohibits taxpayer funds for being used to pay for these “gender transition” procedures for minors.
“At the end of the day, there are two positions here,” said Governor Tate Reeves.
“One tells children that they’re beautiful the way they are. That they can find happiness in their own bodies. The other tells them that they should take drugs and cut themselves up with expensive surgeries in order to find freedom from depression.
“I know which side I’m on. No child in Mississippi will have these drugs or surgeries pushed upon them.”
In a statement after Gov. Reeves signed HB 1125 into law, Autumn Leva, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Family Policy Alliance, said that Mississippi has joined a “chorus of states taking child safety seriously.”
“When a child is deeply struggling, he or she deserves meaningful help – not the harm of hormones and surgery. These states recognize that,” Leva added. “And these interventions do cause serious harm. They often leave young people sterile, with a variety of irreversible maladies and physical changes, and the deep pain of regret. All this can happen before a child is even old enough to buy cough syrup over the counter. This law will stand in the gap.”
Just two days later, Gov. Lee signed Tennessee’s SB 1 into law – fulfilling a push to protect minors in The Volunteer State that began after Daily Wire host Matt Walsh and his team exposed Vanderbilt University’s Transgender Health Clinic.
Walsh had discovered that “Vanderbilt drugs, chemically castrates, and performs double mastectomies on minors,” procedures which Dr. Tayler, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt Health, called a “huge money maker” and can cost up to $100,000.
According to ABC News, so far eight states have passed various versions of “Help Not Harm” legislation that prohibits “sex change” procedures on minors. At least 23 more states are currently considering proposed legislation.
The following map shows where “sex change” procedures are prohibited for minors, where they have been proposed, and where there is not yet any proposed legislation.
Photo Credit: ABC News
Of note, in Orwellian fashion, ABC News falsely calls these laws “Gender-Affirming Youth Care Bans.”
No. These laws protect a young person’s true sexual identity by ensuring doctors cannot, through drugs and surgeries, mutilate their body parts to make them appear more like the opposite sex.
It says a lot about our societal and cultural decline that we need state and federal laws prohibiting physicians from conducting these kinds of harmful, damaging and irreversible procedures on minors. And yet, we do.
Though the debate over transgenderism will continue to be fought in the cultural and media spheres of society, the solution to it will come from the political realm. For only by enacting good state and federal laws – like HB 1126 and SB 1 – will minors be protected.
If you or someone you know need help dealing with the transgender issue, check out Focus on the Family’s Transgender Resources page here.
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