Posted on 07/03/2023 9:04:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has vetoed a bill that was meant to protect children from transgender gender-change surgeries and other procedures like giving kids cross-sex hormones.
House Bill 648, known as the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act,” was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature along party lines in early June.
The bill sought to prohibit hormone treatments for minors as well as puberty-blocking drugs and gender reassignment surgery, such as giving girls who identify as boys double mastectomies, which critics have decried as a form of mutilation.
“If HB 648 doesn’t become law, we will be sending a horrible message to our children,” Louisiana state Sen. Jeremy Stine, a Republican, wrote on Twitter after the bill’s passage and as questions swirled around whether it would receive a veto.
“This isn’t complicated. Our kids deserve to know that they are loved, valued, and perfect just as God created them,” the Republican lawmaker added.
Stine’s fear that the bill would get nixed before it entered into force became a reality on June 29, when the Louisiana governor said in a letter (pdf) that he had vetoed it.
Some had held out hopes that Edwards wouldn’t veto HB 648 because in the prior legislative session, he decided not to block a law banning transgender-identifying athletes from taking part in women and girls’ sports competitions.
However, Edwards’ six-page veto letter made clear his opposition to the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act,” which he called “ironic” because he claimed “that is precisely what it does.”
Edwards’ letter was addressed to Clay Schexnayder, the Republican Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives.
In it, Edwards said the bill threatens specialists’ professional licenses, removes parental rights in healthcare decisions for children with gender dysphoria, and generally amounts to a “targeted assault” on kids suffering psychologically from a “gender crisis.”
“The bill denies healthcare to a very small, unique, and vulnerable group of children,” he wrote. “It forces children currently stabilized on medication to treat a legitimate healthcare diagnosis to stop taking it.”
Edwards said that there was no evidence of any gender-change surgeries being performed in Louisiana between 2017 and 2021, and argued that supporters of the bill suggested it was “necessary to stop physicians from mutilating our children by performing gruesome sex change surgeries.”
“This is simply not happening in Louisiana,” he said, arguing that the bill sought to address a non-existent problem of sex reassignment surgeries in the state while in actual fact blocking access to “necessary” medication and other less invasive medical interventions for children suffering from gender dysphoria.
“I can even agree with that prohibition in this bill,” Edwards said of the bill’s provisions to ban transgender surgeries, while adding that, “unfortunately, that is not the intent of this bill and seemed to be included for dramatic effect to overshadow the medically appropriate use of puberty blockers and hormone replacements.”
Edwards also objected to a number of other “structural defects” in the bill that made it “ripe for a veto,” including insufficient clarity about what specific types of medical interventions would be subject to penalties or revocation of license.
With Edwards’ veto, the current regulations in Louisiana on transgender procedures for children remain unchanged. Specifically, they require that anyone under 18 is required to obtain parental consent before they can access hormone therapies, puberty blockers, and other treatments for gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is generally defined as distress over gender identity that doesn’t match a person’s biological sex.
Gender-reassignment “treatments” have become a prominent issue in state legislatures nationwide, as Democratic and Republican lawmakers advocate for bills that either advance or restrict such procedures.
At least 19 states have passed laws that shield minors from transgender surgeries and related procedures. Proponents of the procedures call them “gender-affirming care” while opponents consider gender dysphoria to be a psychological issue that need psychological solutions, with physical interventions being seen as mutilation of children’s changing bodies.
In recent years, leaders in the U.S. health care industry such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have ramped up the promotion and use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and have even recommended gender transition surgeries for children.
Dr. Julia Mason, a member of the AAP, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that the push in the United States for transgender medical interventions on minors is “primarily political” and linked to profit-making.
“The United States is becoming more of an outlier every day,” Mason said. “Every country that has taken a serious look at the evidence has concluded that medical transition of children is experimental, and the evidence doesn’t support doing it.”
Dr. Jeff Barke, a primary care physician in California’s Orange County and member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that the recent surge in support for the transgender movement is political and contrived.
“It’s not science, it is politics,” he said. “Europe is moving toward freedom … while we are headed toward more socialism and totalitarianism.”
Barke said that performing gender transition surgery on minors is a “grotesque” form of child abuse that “should be illegal.”
Brad Jones contributed to this report.
This is a surprise from LA.
When a society turns on it’s children then that society has set down the path to it’s own destruction.
The Republicans has a super majority in both houses, in the Senate by one. Get to work, boys and girls
Anybody know if this guvnah is a pedo?
Endorsing gender mutilation on children is monstrously evil.
I’m not surprised by this veto.
There is a tiny portion of the population that suffers from incurable genetic defects for whom such treatment is actually essential.
For example, NCCAH causes the adrenal system to grossly overproduce free floating adrenal androgens. This can cause all sorts of issues for kids with NCCAH, including early onset of puberty, premature bone maturation resulting in stunted growth, and more. The recognized treatment to slow the process down is puberty blockers.
Further, boys with Klinefelters or Kallman’s syndrome or those born with a micropenis or suffering from hypogonadism benefit greatly from testosterone treatments.
I get where concerned parents and politicians are coming from, but tossing out bills without consulting endocrinologists (particularly since almost all of these defects are endocrine-based) is just plain ignorant.
On the contrary; failing to consult Endocrinologists on the wide array of rare genetic disorders requiring hormone treatments is monstrously stupid.
If the bill did not allow for these, then the politicians who put it together are idiots and the veto was a wise move.
Governor Select Hobbs of Arizona has vetoed over 100 bills so far. One of them was similar to the bill in this thread.
Check his computer for kiddie porn.
I reside here and HOW this yahoo got office is beyond me,but like any decent American we shake our heads with agreement while doing the exact opposite and somehow some way the doctors and facilities that do such horrific acts just seem to ahhh have a hard time staying a float.
Except you know full well that has nothing to do with the bill, or his reasoning for vetoing it.
All those Edwards people are weirdos.
The Governor is a DEMOCRAT!! NO SURPRISE!
Good point.
People in LA should be excited that after mid-January 2024, he will no longer be governor. A total fraud!
A considerable swath of LA GOP reps are liberal Democrats in disguise to get elected in conservative districts. Conservatives can’t figure out that they are being had.
He got into office twice because of the duplicity of Republican leaders.
Ummmmm - find another tree to bark up - don’t compare apples to turds.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.