COLUMBUS, Ohio (ChurchMilitant.com) – Lawmakers in the Buckeye State have banned transgender mutilation for minors and helped to ensure a level playing field in female sports.
Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio
State senators on Wednesday voted 24-8 to override the governor’s veto and approved House Bill 68, which outlaws transgender surgeries and hormones for children and adolescents as well as bars athletes from competing as the opposite sex. The bill is also known as the Enact Ohio Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
Catholic Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, vetoed the bill last month, claiming it is up to families to decide what is good for their children. “These are gut-wrenching decisions that should be made by parents and should be informed by teams of doctors who are advising them,” he said.
DeWine insisted, “Many parents have told me that their child would not have survived, would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from one of Ohio’s children’s hospitals.” He added, “I’ve also been told by those who are now grown adults that but for this care, they would have taken their life when they were teenagers.”
Ohio’s Senate voted to override DeWine’s veto. The tally met the three-fifths majority vote from members of the Senate and the House needed to nullify the governor’s veto. The Ohio House voted to override HB68 earlier this month.
A lone protester was removed from inside the Senate chamber before the vote. “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, LGBTQIA,” she shouted. “Jesus would be here on their side today. We need to support them.” Protesters reportedly assembled outside the Statehouse as well.
Senators discussed HB68 for about an hour before the vote, according to the Ohio Capital Journal. Comments were divided along partisan lines.
Republican State Sen. Kristina Roegner said, “There are men, and there are women; and there are boys, and there are girls; and they are different. Gender is not fluid. There is no such thing as a gender spectrum,” she argued.
Ohio Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio called the SAFE Act “harmful legislation,” claiming, “Politicians have no business banning evidence-based, life-saving medical care — especially when it is endorsed by every major medical and mental health association,”
DeWine surprised many people on both sides of the political aisle when he vetoed the SAFE Act, leaving them to speculate on what led the governor to make his decision.
The Federalist Papers, a media outlet describing its purpose as “giving people the means to be their own governors,” posited that DeWine’s veto “appears to be influenced by substantial donations from organizations supportive of transgender medical care.”
The site reports that, from 2018 to 2023, the governor was given $40,300 from the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, Cincinnati Children’s, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and ProMedica Children’s Hospital. Some of these hospitals offer what the Federalist Papers called “gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, without specifying an age limit for patients.”
So-called gender-affirming care is supported by major medical organizations in the United States. Children’s hospitals throughout Ohio, the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association as well as the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians oppose HB68.
Matt Sharp
Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, lauded the Ohio Senate’s override that corrected the governor’s “misguided veto.” “Biology is clear: There are only two sexes — male and female — and denying this basic truth only hurts the most vulnerable, our precious children,” he added.
Sharp told the Washington Examiner that Wednesday’s vote means that Ohio joins “more than 20 other states and several European countries in fighting for truth and curtailing the deployment of harmful surgeries and drugs that are devastating countless lives.”
Senior counsel Christiana Kiefer, another ADF lawyer, celebrated the override:
Women and girls deserve a fair and level playing field. Yet when males are allowed to enter the women’s sports arena, they have clear biological advantages that result in female athletes losing medals, podium spots, public recognition, and opportunities to compete. And no young woman should be forced to share a locker room with a male.
Ohio joins over 20 other states that are enacting laws to protect female athletes from unfair competition in sports designated for women and girls.
