The Ohio House of Representatives voted Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would protect children from irreversible transgender sex-change procedures and medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormones.
The state’s House of Representatives met Wednesday afternoon to vote 65-28 to override the governor’s veto. It now heads to the senate.
“Ohio and the entire nation have spoken,” said Center for Christian Virtue Policy Director David Mahan in a statement following the news. “It’s not okay to chemically sterilize and mutilate children, and no clinic can transform little girls into little boys with pills and scalpels. Additionally, HB68 will protect women’s and girls’ privacy rights and guarantee them a fair playing field and the opportunity to win athletic scholarships.”
“I want to thank Representatives Click and Powell for courageously championing this legislation, and Speaker Stephens for acting swiftly to protect our kids from the dangerous consequences of Governor DeWine’s veto of HB68,” he added. “I now urge the Senate to do the same.”
On Friday, DeWine issued an “emergency” executive order to ban sex-reassignment surgeries for minors (but not hormones and puberty blockers) just one week after he vetoed House Bill 68, the Enact Ohio Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
The SAFE Act would ban cross-sex hormones and so-called puberty blockers for children, measures DeWine’s executive order apparently omits. The bill would also have addressed fairness in women’s sports, an issue DeWine’s executive order also does not address.
“Although I vetoed … House Bill 68, I stated clearly in my veto message that I agreed with the General Assembly that no gender-transition surgeries should be performed on anyone under the age of 18, and I directed agencies under my purview to draft rules to ban this practice in Ohio,” DeWine said in his Jan. 5 executive order.
He also declared that “an emergency exists requiring the immediate adoption of rules 3701-59-06 and 3701-83-60 of the Ohio Administrative Code.”
According to the executive order, the regulations “would prohibit gender-transition surgeries on anyone under the age of 18 in Ohio’s hospitals and health care facilities, including ambulatory surgical facilities.”
Tyler O’Neill contributed to this report.
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