COLUMBUS, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — The Ohio House voted to override Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of legislation that bans the chemical and surgical mutilation of gender-confused kids, sometimes referred to as “sex changes.” The legislation also prohibits gender-confused males from competing against females in women’s sports.
The House passed the legislation, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, again on Wednesday by a vote of 65-28. The Ohio Senate convenes again on January 24 and could vote to override the governor’s veto.
The moderate Republican governor vetoed the legislation at the end of December after lobbying from LGBT activists.
Last week, he signed a limited executive order that adopted state health department rules to “prohibit gender transition surgeries on anyone under the age of 18 in Ohio’s hospitals and health care facilities, including ambulatory surgical facilities,” as reported by LifeSiteNews. However, it does not protect kids against hormone injections nor contain protections for female athletes.
DeWine echoed a favored talking point of some Republicans, saying the government should not be involved in whether kids can have permanent surgical and chemical changes. The same libertarian argument has been used by failed presidential candidates and former governors Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson.
He also cited the often made but baseless claim that children who are not allowed to present themselves as the opposite sex will commit suicide. The claims of the alleged “benefits” of surgical and chemical interventions have been repudiated by credentialed medical experts, and numerous European countries are moving to restrict the procedures.
In addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.
In any case, it is not possible for someone to change his or her sex.
“Detransitioners,” the name for individuals who used to present themselves as the opposite sex, have also spoken out against the procedures.
Chloe Cole, for example, had a double mastectomy as a teenager, which has permanently left her unable to nurse any children in the future. She also fears the drugs she took could permanently affect her fertility.
“This is the sterilization and mutilation of thousands of children happening within a state that is being entirely complicit in the choice to continue this,” Cole told Fox News, criticizing DeWine’s decision. She said that the governor appeared disturbed after hearing Cole’s story.
Morgan Keller, a 26-year-old female, also told Ohio lawmakers in Ohio that practitioners had “affirmed” her gender confusion without addressing her underlying mental health issues, resulting in devastating, permanent effects, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
“I wish I had been told ‘no’ by the practitioners that I trusted. I wish I could say that I’m the exception to the rule, but everybody in this room knows that is false,” she said. “I come to you wearing the scars of this medical scandal, asking you to please vote in support of House Bill 68 to protect Ohio’s children.”