Utah Becomes Sixth State to Protect Minors from Experimental ‘Gender Transition’ Procedures

Utah

The state of Utah became the sixth state to protect minors from harmful and experimental “gender transition” procedures over the weekend, after Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed Senate Bill 16 into law on Saturday.

Senate Bill 16 (SB 16), the “Transgender Medical Treatment and Procedures” Act, prohibits state physicians from performing so-called sex change surgeries on minors. In addition, it prohibits health care providers from prescribing cross-sex hormones to minors who have not already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

SB 16 also creates a cause of action allowing minors who later regret their decision to undergo “sex change” procedures to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against their physicians.

“More and more experts, states and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences,” Gov. Cox said in a statement.

“While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” he added.

Utah is now the sixth state that has enacted laws protecting minors from these harmful. procedures, following Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, and Florida.

The news of Gov. Cox’s signing of SB 16 is somewhat surprising, considering last year, the governor vetoed a “Save Girls Sports” bill – House Bill 11 – that was crafted to protect girls and women’s sports in Utah’s schools from biological males who wished to compete as girls.

Thankfully, the Utah state legislature quickly overrode the governor’s veto on March 25, 2022, which made Utah the 12th state to protect girls and women’s sports.

Following Gov. Cox’s signing of SB 16, mainstream media outlets have again offered up a lesson in how media reporting, driven by biases and agendas, can be used to influence public opinion.

The Associated Press, for example, published an article with this headline: “Utah governor OKs bill banning gender affirming health care.”

“Utah’s Republican governor on Saturday signed bills that ban youth from receiving gender-affirming health care,” The AP charged. The outlet quoted the leftist ACLU of Utah, which said it was concerned about “the damaging and potentially catastrophic efforts this law will have on people’s lives and medical care and the grave violations of people’s constitutional rights it will cause.”

Now let’s be clear, there is no constitutional right for minors to access “sex change” procedures of any sort. And calling a law which protects minors from irreversible, life altering and damaging procedures “catastrophic” is 180-degrees backwards.

CNN said the bill “banned hormone treatment and surgical procedures for minors seeking gender-affirming care, the latest in a series of anti-trans bills involving minors that have been passed across the country.”

Even Fox News called the bill a “gender-affirming health care ban.”

But so-called “gender-affirming health care” is nothing of the sort.

“Sex-change” surgeries, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers don’t aim to “affirm” someone’s gender. Rather, they seek to make an individual appear more like the opposite sex, even though no number of surgeries or hormones can truly change someone’s sex.

The nearly unanimous move by mainstream media outlets to label harmful and experimental procedures and surgeries as “gender-affirming” is straight out of The Party’s playbook in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. He wrote:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

In the same way, leftist activist groups like the ACLU, mainstream media outlets and left-wing organizations and politicians are demanding the American people reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. They hope that if they repeat the lie consistently and loudly enough, it will slowly become the truth. They demand that Americans give up their use of reason, by which we know that there are only two, distinct and complementary sexes, and that sex is immutable and unchangeable.

We should not comply.

On the contrary, every state should enact legislation protecting minors from damaging “sex change” procedures, and it’s a very good thing that Utah has now done so.

Photo from Shutterstock.

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