'Their brains aren't fully developed': Oklahoma Guv Kevin Stitt signs bill prohibiting trans surgery for minors
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA: Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed a bill defunding gender transition medical services such as transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones, for individuals under the age of 18 years at Oklahoma Children's Hospital at OU Health.
"By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies. It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children," said Governor Stitt.
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Stitt continued, "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. 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."
The bill forbids the University of Oklahoma Medical Center from utilizing Covid relief money to pay for children's gender reassignment treatment. The governor also said the bill does not go far enough and has urged lawmakers to take action during the upcoming legislative session, in February, to outlaw hormone therapy and irreversible gender transition procedures on children statewide.
In a phone interview with The Daily Signal, Stitt acknowledged the media uproar over the legislation and said, "It’s pretty common sense to us. We found out that one of our university hospitals was doing irreversible gender transition surgeries, hormone therapies to minors. And we just don’t think that’s right. Minors need to be protected. We don’t let minors drink alcohol. We don’t let minors do a lot of things and life-altering surgeries for a minor, we just think it makes no sense whatsoever."
"We’ve talked to the board of the hospital, the board members there," he went on, "They are totally on board. They were shocked. A lot of people didn’t know what was happening. And so the hospital has agreed, they’re shutting that down, what they call the Roy G. Biv program at the Oklahoma Children’s Hospital."
Stitt slammed major media outlets for using “fancy terms” like "withholding hospital funding over trans youth care" or blocking the hospital from "providing gender-affirming care" and emphasized that in actuality, "this is taking a 12-year-old [whose] brain is not fully developed and castrating them." He insists that, "These are permanent issues- sterilizing people, cutting off reproductive organs" which he does not think is "normal".
Jimmy Nguyen, the president of Oklahoma city's PFLAG, an LGBTQ advocacy group, told Fox News in a statement, "From what we understand, the medical community believes the effects of hormone therapy on brain development is largely unknown. At this time the general consensus by the medical community is that it is better to pause the hormones and allow the youth to come to terms with themselves in their own time."
"The larger issue at hand here is that Gov. Stitt should not be taking this crucial decision out of the hands of families and the children that they directly affect," Nguyen continued. "That seems uncharacteristic for someone who touts family values and freedoms."