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Loudoun County parents at the June 22, 2021 school board meeting. Parents protested transgender policies and propaganda in schools as well as critical race theoryTwitter video / Gabriella Borter

(LifeSiteNews) – Republican state legislators are pushing back against the transgender movement with a wave of new bills targeting dangerous transgender procedures for children and unfair competition in women’s and girls sports.

Lawmakers filed the bills in at least 10 states, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

In Kentucky, House Bill 253 would ban health care professionals from providing hormone blockers, transgender surgeries, or referrals for transgender procedures to gender dysphoric minors under 18 years old. The bill would categorize the practices as unprofessional conduct, subject to disciplinary action by medical boards.

Parents could also sue doctors for “actual or threatened” violations of the law, as could anybody who suffered a “gender transition” as a child. Other provisions include a ban on public funding for entities that provide transgender drugs or surgeries to minors.

The Arizona Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, or Senate Bill 1045, would also criminalize providing minors with hormone drugs or “gender transition” surgeries as felony offenses. SB 1045 additionally blocks teachers or other school officials from withholding a student’s gender confusion from his or her parents or encouraging students not to inform their parents about their gender problems.

A similarly-named bill in Alabama would strictly ban transgender drugs and surgeries for anyone below age 19. Violations would be punishable with up to 10 years in prison.

“There are no rigorous studies that show that gender changing therapies performed on children, including the administration of puberty blocking medications, the administration of opposite sex hormones, or surgeries intended to approximate the appearance of the opposite sex have any long-term beneficial effect, including a reduction in suicide risk,” according to the legislation, introduced by Republican Alabama Sen. Shay Shelnutt.

“To the contrary, such interventions carry elevated risks for sterility, loss of sexual function, bone fractures, thromboembolic and cardiovascular disease, malignancy, and may even contribute to mental illness and suicide. The continued performing of these therapies upon children constitutes a public health risk.”

Shelnutt last year proposed the same measure, Senate Bill 5, which passed the Alabama Senate but died without a vote in the Republican-controlled state House.

The bill echoes concerns of top pediatric experts, like Dr. Quentin Van Meter, president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), who recently told LifeSiteNews that giving hormone blockers to children with gender dysphoria is a form of child abuse.

“I think the steps that have been proposed in terms of making this an offense and considering it to be medically unethical should be pressed to the max,” Van Meter said. “It should be looked at in terms of licensure of physicians who do this.”

“This is one large experiment on American children.”

No drugs have ever been approved for gender dysphoria or evaluated in long-term clinical studies with gender-confused minors. But dozens of gender clinics and major health systems have nevertheless ramped up prescriptions of puberty blockers to children in recent years to halt their natural puberty and affirm their so-called “transgender identities.”

Up to around 100 percent of boys and 90 percent of girls with gender dysphoria come to accept their biological sex by adulthood, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Virtually all those started on puberty blockers later take cross-sex hormones, however, which sterilize users and typically lead to devastating transgender surgeries.

At the same time, puberty blocking drugs, like Supprelin LA and Lupron, are linked to serious, permanent side effects, such as osteoporosis, cognitive impairment, and sterility.

Three states took action in 2021 against transgender procedures for minors, including Arkansas, which criminalized the experimental practices for children under 18, and Tennessee, which outlawed hormone drugs for prepubescent kids. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration also declared transgender surgeries child abuse in August. The top Texas gender clinic for minors shut down weeks later.

Saving women’s sports

In addition to protections against transgender drugs and surgeries, Republican lawmakers filed several bills in the first days of 2022 that would prohibit attempts to redefine biological sex in school sports.

Among the legislation is the Save Girls Sports Act in Georgia, which would block any school system, or private school that plays against a public school, from letting biological males compete against females. Students or students parents’ can sue schools over violations of the act.

Lawmakers have introduced similar bills in Arizona, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, and South Dakota.

Another proposed bill in Missouri would ban men from competing in women’s sports at colleges that receive state funding, and draft legislation in New Hampshire would allow public entities, like schools and jails, to differentiate between women and men with confused “gender identities.”

Nine states, including Florida, Texas, and Alabama, already enacted transgender sports restrictions last year, amid reports of biological males injuring female opponents and taking athletic opportunities from girls across the country. Studies have repeatedly shown that gender-confused men massively outperform women in athletic competitions, regardless of attempts at a feminized appearance. Researchers recently found that 12 months of transgender hormones only result in “very modest changes” to males’ inherent strength advantages.

In the wake of the Loudoun County transgender bathroom rape scandal, Republicans in South Dakota and Oklahoma have also filed bills to keep students of the opposite sex out of sex-specific private spaces.

“All across the country, including in South Dakota, laws and policies are being changed to redefine sex in a manner that denies the material reality of sex,” South Dakota Rep. Fred Deutsch told NBC News. His bill, House Bill 1005, “is designed to ensure that, at least in South Dakota, we maintain a definition of sex that actually reflects reality,” Deutsch said.

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