JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (LifeSiteNews) – Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed legislation ensuring the state will not conduct gender “transition” procedures for prison inmates at taxpayers’ expense.
House Bill 2009 is an appropriations package for the Missouri Department of Corrections, which contains a provision stating “no funds shall be expended for any cross-sex hormones, or gender transition surgery undertaken for the purpose of any gender transition.” Kehoe vetoed several unrelated provisions within the bill, citing their expense.
The Kansas City Star reported that the measure expands on a 2023 law that bans transgender surgeries within the prison system. Under the law, hormone replacement therapy was still available with a prescription. “Going forward, the health care provider will not be able to use state funds for residents’ hormone replacement therapy,” Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann confirmed.
“We applaud Gov. Kehoe for protecting Missouri taxpayers from being forced to fund harmful transition drugs and surgeries,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matt Sharp said. “Growing medical evidence demonstrates that these procedures are neither safe nor effective in treating gender dysphoria. And no amount of drugs or surgeries can change a person’s sex. Instead, states should prioritize counseling to help individuals address the underlying causes of their distress and find comfort with their bodies. We also commend Rep. Dirk Deaton and Sen. Brad Hudson for their leadership in shepherding this important legislation.”
The Star further noted that legal challenges are expected, based on the argument that prisoners have no alternatives to whatever healthcare choices the prison system gives them.
In recent years, there has been growing concern around the world over placing men who claim to be women in female prison populations, which has proved to be a means of both securing lighter treatment during incarceration and gaining easy access to women to prey upon. Transgender status also has the potential to be exploited to avoid incarceration entirely in some cases, as seen in Wales when a man who identified as a woman received a suspended sentence keeping him out of prison despite physically assaulting two partners within days of each other, on the grounds that he would be “vulnerable” behind bars.
In May 2023, investigative journalist James O’Keefe released an interview with U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologist Dr. Linda Noelle, who said that “male and female prisoners “both play the victim card” to obtain gender “reassignment” surgeries at taxpayer expense. “And then they go through (the far-left American Civil Liberties Union), and then the ACLU sues the (U.S. Department of Justice)” when demands for subsidized transition procedures are initially rejected, Noelle told O’Keefe. “And the DOJ, unfortunately, under Merrick Garland, it rolls over. It doesn’t go through the courts, so they just pay people off.”
In California in summer 2023, biologically male triple murderer David “Dana Rivers” Wakefield began serving his life sentence in a women’s prison. The state has allowed biological males to be housed with female inmates since 2021, which critics say puts actual female inmates in serious danger.
In May 2024, Hector Bravo Ferrel, a U.S. Army Iraq veteran who served the California Department of Corrections for 16 years, spoke out about his decision to resign in protest of leaders allowing male inmates to exploit “gender-affirming” policies. “They were like kids in the candy store, because they knew they were going from a men’s prison to a females’ prison,” he said.
On the national level, on his first day back in the White House this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing, among other things, that the heads of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” under their jurisdiction.