On Friday, Republican Governor Mark Gordon signed legislation outlawing the life-altering practice of gender surgery on minors, making Wyoming the 24th state to do so.
The state’s House and Senate decisively approved Senate File 99, which forbids “physicians from performing operations for children relating to gender transitioning and reassignment.”
Gordon signed the measure into law and stated that he was in favor of shielding kids from damaging gender norms, but he also expressed worry about the government intruding on “private family matters,” according to Wyo4News.
“I signed SF99 because I agree with the safeguards this law offers. Gordon stated in a news release, “But I think the government is getting too involved in family matters. Our legislature needs to figure out what it wants to do about parental rights.” In certain instances, it upholds parental rights while inserting state authority in others.
Exemptions from the bill are provided for “any procedure or treatment that is performed with the consent of the child’s parent or guardian and is for a child with medically verifiable central precocious puberty” and “procedures or treatments that are performed with the consent of the child’s parent or guardian and are for a child who is born with a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development.”
The governor rejected legislation that would have controlled abortion facilities in Wyoming, claiming the law would be open to legal challenges even though Gordon passed the bill prohibiting gender surgeries on minors, according to Wyo4News.
As further allegations of hospitals performing the operations surfaced, Republican-led states started to outlaw gender surgery on children starting in 2022. Matt Walsh, presenter of The Daily Wire, revealed startling information on children’s gender surgery procedures performed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in September 2022.
A video from one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture shows Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor of the VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health saying, “It’s a lot of money.” “The money from these operations is really high.”
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and many more states approved legislation shielding minors from gender surgery and hormone therapy in the wake of Walsh’s VUMC revelations. Judges have, however, temporarily overturned laws prohibiting gender surgery in Montana and Idaho, while a federal judge declared Arkansas’s prohibition on the operations to be “unconstitutional,” overturning the state’s legislation.
