Members of the Ohio State Senate voted to override a veto on a bill that would prohibit so-called sex-change hormones and surgeries for minors, meaning that the procedures are now banned in the state as the legislation formally becomes law.
Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine recently provoked backlash when he vetoed the law, prompting the Ohio State House to override the veto earlier this month. Republicans in the State Senate followed suit on Wednesday in a vote that fell largely along party lines.
The new law bans purported sex reassignment surgeries and hormones for minors, as well as prohibits males from participating in primary, secondary, and postsecondary sports leagues. The legislation takes effect in ninety days.
“There is no such thing as gender-affirming care,” Ohio Republican State Senator Kristina Roegner said ahead of the vote. “You can’t affirm something that doesn’t exist.”
Ohio State Republican Representative Gary Click, another sponsor of the bill, issued a release commending his colleagues in the State Senate for enacting the legislation. He said that the statute will ensure that “children have the right to grow up intact” and guarantee that “women are no longer subject to men invading their spaces.”
At least twenty-three states have now passed prohibitions on transgender surgeries and hormone procedures for minors, which have been criticized for the irreversible physical harm they render and the biological impossibility of changing individual sex.
At least twenty states have likewise approved a blanket ban on males from participating in female sports leagues, but the Biden administration is contesting the prohibitions on the grounds that they “violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.”
The White House likewise issued a statement last year noting their opposition to the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a measure to establish a nationwide standard under which children must compete in sports leagues consistent with their true sex. “At a time when transgender youth already face a nationwide mental health crisis, with half of transgender youth in a recent survey saying they have seriously considered suicide, a national law that further stigmatizes these children is completely unnecessary, hurts families and students, and would only put students at greater risk,” the administration said.
