Late last month, Townhall reported that a Republican governor had vetoed measures intended to protect women’s sports and protect children from irreversible, experimental transgender “care.” This includes puberty blocking drugs, gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy.
Unsurprisingly, the governor has come under fire from women’s sports advocates and others opposed to this type of transgender ideology. The state legislature had enough votes to override the veto.
The governor said at the time that his state “would say that the state, the government, knows better what’s best for a child from a medical standpoint than the two people who love that child the most, which are the parents.”
This week, Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio reversed course and announced that he had signed an executive order banning gender-selective surgery for children (via NOV 8):
“It’s been a week and I still feel as confident as I did that day,” DeWine said. “I believe that parents, not the government, should make these very important medical decisions for children.”
Still, the governor said Friday that the gender reassignment surgery ban is an exception because there is a “broad consensus against surgery on minors.” Nick Lashutka, president of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, previously testified that the state’s children’s hospitals “do not perform any surgeries on minors for gender dysphoria.”
DeWine also announced Friday that the Ohio Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services will propose several draft regulations that “will provide protections for children and adults receiving care in this area in hospitals and clinics,” including the following:
Requirement for a multidisciplinary team to support the patient with gender transition care.
Requirement for a comprehensive care plan that includes sufficient informed parental consent regarding the risks associated with gender reassignment treatment.
Requirement for comprehensive and long-term mental health counseling before gender reassignment treatment is considered.
DeWine said the proposed rules would prevent the operation of “nightclubs” that allegedly do not provide adequate mental health counseling.
Last month, Isabelle Ayala, 20, a displaced Florida woman, told the Independent Women’s Forum that she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria after just 45 minutes of seeing a doctor when she was 14 years venerable. She explained that doctors had her parents seated and said she would have committed suicide if she had not received gender therapy. At the next visit, she was given hormones, which she used until the lockdown was introduced in 2020.
Now Ayala is suing the American Academy of Pediatrics for the role it played in her gender care.
“I still have a lot of problems, both mentally and physically,” Ayala said.
“I don’t even like to think about my fertility,” she added. “My biggest fear is going to the gynecologist and being told that I can’t have children because of decisions made when I was 14.”
