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Gov. Kevin Stitt, R-Okla., signed a bill on Tuesday blocking taxpayer dollars from funding gender transition treatments in Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at OU Health.
“By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies,” Stitt said, according to a press release from his office. “It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children.”
The hospital’s Roy G. Biv program, which offers “gender-affirming hormone therapy” and helps “find surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries,” has vowed to stop some of the gender-changing treatments. Nonetheless, Stitt is demanding the state legislature to permanently ban gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies across the state, the press release notes.
“I am calling for the Legislature to ban all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors when they convene next session in February 2023. We cannot turn a blind eye to what’s happening all across our nation, and as governor I will not allow life-altering transition surgeries on minor children in the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt maintained.
Similarly, in July, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Biden administration from threatening schools with investigations for not complying with Education Department’s Title IX guidance on gender identity and sexual orientation, RSBN previously reported.
The judge, Charles Atchley Jr., a Trump appointee, sided with Oklahoma and the plaintiffs over concerns that the guidance, allowing students to use school restrooms and join sports teams based on their gender identity, would inhibit states from legislating on the matter.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor celebrated the ruling, saying, “The federal district court ruling out of Tennessee is a major victory for women’s sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in their school bathrooms and locker rooms.”
“I am grateful the court ruled for Oklahoma and stopped the Biden Administration from enforcing its outrageous reading of Title IX, to include gender identity as a protected class. I will continue to hold President Biden accountable and do everything I can to uphold the rule of law,” O’Connor added.
SB 3XX also grants roughly $40 million to “increase and expand capacity of behavioral health care for children” and sets aside $20 million for cancer patients, $44 million for electronic health record systems, and more than $5 million for mobile dental units.
