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LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas, July 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – U.S. District Judge Jay Moody issued a temporary block Wednesday on an Arkansas law banning “sex-reassignment” surgery or hormone treatments for gender-confused minors, claiming its enforcement “would cause irreparable harm.”
The Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, enacted in April by the legislature over a veto from Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, prohibits implementation, referral, or taxpayer funding for “puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, or other mechanisms to promote the development of feminizing or masculinizing features in the opposite biological sex, or genital or nongenital gender reassignment surgery performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with a gender transition” on anyone younger than 18.
The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the law in June, prompting 17 states to come to Arkansas’s defense. But ABC News reported that Moody sided with the ACLU in the short term, meaning the SAFE Act will not take effect on July 28 as planned.
“To pull this care midstream from these patients, or minors, would cause irreparable harm,” Moody declared. “Public interest calls favor to the plaintiffs.”
“We are disappointed but not surprised that a judge has placed a temporary hold on the Arkansas law that protects children from unscientific, experimental, and destructive gender transition procedures,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins responded. “However, we are confident that ultimately state lawmakers will remain free to protect the health and safety of children.”
“The legal challenge to this law is being mounted by a political movement that advocates for using off-label drugs and experimental procedures on minors,” he continued. “Yet a growing number of individuals are coming forward to share their stories of being permanently disfigured and/or sterilized from procedures such as puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. The truth about the dangers of these life altering procedures cannot be ignored.”
A range of scientific literature indicates that reinforcing gender confusion often fails to prevent significant emotional harm up to and including attempted suicide (with or without surgery), because fixating on “gender affirmation” tends to distract from exploring other issues that may be the actual root of a patient’s mental or emotional unrest.
On top of those issues, experts warn that surgically or chemically reinforcing gender confusion imposes irreversible harm on children such as infertility, impairment of adult sex function, and reduced life expectancy, as well as the psychological toll of being “locked into” physical alterations regardless of whether they change their minds when they mature.
“I will aggressively defend Arkansas’s law which strongly limits permanent, life-altering sex changes to adolescents,” Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge responded Wednesday. “I will not sit idly by while radical groups such as the ACLU use our children as pawns for their own social agenda. As the Attorney General of Arkansas, I will be appealing today’s decision.”