On Tuesday, Oklahoma enacted legislation that would ban gender-transition procedures for minors at a major children’s hospital in the state.
Oklahoma Republican governor Kevin Stitt signed a law Tuesday that would block funding to prevent gender-transition medical interventions such as reconstructive genital surgery and hormone therapy for children at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at the University of Oklahoma Health Services.
Under Senate Bill 3XX, OU facilities cannot administer to a minor “any health care to facilitate the transitioning of a patient’s assigned gender identity on the patient’s birth certificate, to the gender identity experienced and defined by the patient.”
The bill stipulates that no funding should be budgeted or expended for the benefit of any facility owned by OU that performs gender-transition treatment on children under the age of 18. It also provides nearly $40 billion for behavioral health care for children and $20 million for cancer patients, in addition to other health expenditures.
“By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies. It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children,” Stitt said in a press release.
The OU Children’s Hospital website includes an information blurb dedicated to “gender affirmative care.” It advertises that child patients can pursue a number of treatment paths, including “pausing puberty to further explore gender,” “managing gender-affirming hormone therapy,” and “helping find surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries.”
Stitt also urged the legislature to outlaw all irreversible gender-transition surgeries and hormone therapies on children when it starts its next session in February 2023.
“We cannot turn a blind eye to what’s happening all across our nation, and as governor I will not allow life-altering transition surgeries on minor children in the state of Oklahoma,” he added.