Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed legislation effectively banning the prescription of sex reassignment drugs to minors at the state’s largest children’s hospital.
Republican withholds Covid aid from Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at OU Health until it stops providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to under-18s.
The state provided $108 million to the University of Oklahoma-affiliated healthcare system under the Federal American Rescue Plan Act, passed in 2021, to support struggling businesses and hospitals.
Gov. Stitt said on Tuesday: “By signing this bill into law today, we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent sex reassignment surgery and therapy.
“It is totally inappropriate for taxpayers’ money to be used to condone, encourage or perform these types of controversial procedures on healthy children.”
Oklahoma Children’s Hospital is currently offering life-changing medications to teens under 18 with parental consent. It is believed that around 100 minors are currently in treatment.
Stitt also called on the GOP-controlled legislature to ban some of these gender-affirming treatments statewide when they return in February.
He said in a statement he wanted a ban on “all irreversible sex reassignment surgery and hormone therapy” for minors.
Stitt signed legislation restricting transgender children from playing sports, as well as a bathroom law preventing students from using the toilet that reflects their gender identity
Oklahoma Children’s Hospital is currently offering the life-changing drugs to teens under the age of 18 with the consent of their parents. It is believed that around 100 minors are currently in treatment
Under the new law, the services include “interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics, interventions to reconcile the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity, and medical therapies and medical interventions to treat gender dysphoria.”
The language of the bill specifically targets OU Children’s Adolescent Medicine’s Roy G. Biv program.
The hospital currently provides transitional care such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and help finding surgeons to perform gender-affirming surgeries for people up to the age of 24.
What does this mean for trans health care in Oklahoma?
The hospital system has already indicated it will shut down some sex reassignment services it performs in order to comply with the law.
Trans children in the state are now severely restricted as to where they can seek treatment.
Many who want gender-affirming care have to travel abroad to get it.
Stitt has urged lawmakers to ban irreversible sex reassignment surgery and hormone therapy in minors
The bill provides nearly $40 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan to increase and expand capacity for children’s behavioral health care, $20 million for cancer patients disproportionately affected by the pandemic, $44 million to strengthen electronic health record systems and over $5 million for mobile dental units.
OU health said in a statement that the senior leadership team is “proactively planning the cessation of certain sex-related services at our facilities and that plan is already in development.”
This isn’t the first instance of Stitt and the Republican-majority Legislature targeting trans youth.
In March, he signed the Save Women’s Sports Act, which bans public school students of all ages and college athletes from competing on sports teams of their gender identity if it’s different from their birth-assigned gender.
Gov Stitt also signed into law in May banning public school students from using the bathroom that best reflects their gender identity if it doesn’t match the gender listed on their birth certificate.
The signing of the law was rejected by social justice and medical groups.
Tamya Cox-Touré, Executive Director of the Oklahoma ACLU, said‘Today, Oklahoma politicians took the next step and joined their counterparts in Alabama, Arkansas and Texas in attacking the life-saving, proven medical care for transgender youth in Oklahoma.’
“Medical experts agree: Gender-affirming care is medically necessary care. And today’s actions, along with the displays on the House and Senate floors, demonstrate a fundamental ignorance about the medical treatment of transgender youth,” she added.
The Oklahoma State Medical Association, meanwhile, called the main caveat in the bill “troubling.”
“Unfortunately, instead of supporting the mental health of Oklahoma’s children, lawmakers are once again interfering with private healthcare,” the organization said.
Stitt also called on the Republican-led Legislature to immediately ban certain gender-affirming services when they return to session in February.
He said, “We cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening across our country, and as governor, I will not allow life-changing transitional surgeries on underage children in the state of Oklahoma.”