The Wyoming legislature passed a bill this week banning the use of gender transition procedures on children, sending it to the governor’s desk for approval.
Both chambers of the Equality State legislature on Thursday approved the restrictions, which cover transition drugs and surgeries for minors, giving Gov. Mark Gordon (R-WY) three days to sign or veto the bill. If he does neither, the bill will automatically go into effect.
“This has been a big push from the left. It seems to me they want to sterilize children,” Republican state Sen. Andy Bouchard, the bill’s sponsor, said in a recent meeting of the state’s House Judiciary Committee. “This is an evil form of child abuse. I can’t stress enough how important this bill is.”
Medical interventions to transition children are controversial, especially as a growing body of research suggests they can be dangerous, irreversible, and inefficient. Critics have said doctors often push medical transitions on young patients while using harsh coercive tactics on parents to secure their approval.
As a result, many Republican-led states have moved to ban the use of drugs and surgeries on children, even though the American medical establishment insists the interventions are safe, effective, and lifesaving.
Wyoming’s state Senate voted Thursday afternoon to pass the bill 28-2, with one Republican and one Democrat opposing it and one Democrat voting in favor.
The bill would block doctors from being able to prescribe puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgeries for minors in most situations, and it would allow medical boards to revoke the licenses of nurses and doctors who violate the law.
“This bill stops medical providers from mutilating children and prohibits the use of pharmaceuticals to alter normal adolescent development,” Bouchard said, according to the Cowboy State Daily. “The real victims, all minors, were never told how they would face a lifetime of medical complications.”
The legislation, originally called Chloe’s Law after California detransition awareness activist Chloe Cole, caught the attention of activists on both sides of the issue. Cole testified in favor of the bill before the state legislature, explaining that she is a “victim of gender ideology” and that she and her parents were coerced by doctors to pursue a path of gender transition by the time she reached the age of 13, ultimately leading her to receive a double mastectomy by the age of 15.
Medical groups such as the Wyoming Medical Society and the American Academy of Pediatricians, a national advocate of transitioning children, opposed the bill, as did transgender activists in the state, such as Wyoming Equality.
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“The pediatricians of Wyoming are disheartened to see the passage of any legislation that serves to further politicize health care,” AAP President Mike Sanderson told the Cowboy State Daily. “Wyoming physicians deliver the highest level of care to our patients while adhering to the strictest of ethical codes.”
If the bill becomes law, either through inaction or a signature from Gordon, it is set to go into effect July 1. Gordon was critical of a bill banning biological boys from girls’ sports in the past, but he allowed it to go into effect without a signature.
