An Oklahoma bill signed into law Tuesday by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt blocks OU Children's Hospital from providing some gender care to youth.
"By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies," Stitt said in a statement. "It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children."
The bill authorizes more than $108 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act if the health system ceases all gender-affirming medical care on patients under 18.
Specifically, the legislation bans targets "interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics," or puberty blockers; "interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's gender identity," or hormone therapy; and "medical therapies and medical intervention used to treat gender dysphoria," such as surgical interventions.
The hospital on Tuesday said it had ceased medical services related to gender identity, including puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and help finding surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries.
"The OU Health Senior Leadership Team is proactively planning the ceasing of certain gender medicine services across our facilities and that plan is already under development," the hospital system said in a statement to news outlets.
Civil rights groups denounced the new law.
"Medical decisions belong to patients, their parents, and their doctors," Tamya Cox-Toure, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, said in a statement. "Yet politicians, attempting to appeal to their base during an election year, have continued their attacks on bodily autonomy by coming between those directly impacted and the care they need and deserve."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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