Ohio passes rules banning gender transition surgery for minors

COLUMBUS, Ohio ( WCMH ) — Gender transition surgery for minors will now be illegal in Ohio indefinitely unless further action is taken.

At the start of the year, Gov. Mike DeWine signed an emergency executive order to ban those surgeries for Ohioans under 18 ; that order would have expired at the start of May had no action been taken.

On Monday, the state’s Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) adopted two rules into the administrative code to ban those surgeries for minors .

The rules do have exceptions for certain cases, like for someone who was born with a “medically verifiable disorder of sex development” or someone who “needs treatment for any infection, injury, disease, or disorder that has been caused or exacerbated by the performance of gender transition services, whether or not the services were performed in accordance with state or federal law.”

A spokesperson for DeWine said there was a “pretty clear consensus” that allowing minors to have gender-transition surgery should not be permissible in the state. He points to testimony and statements from the state’s children’s hospitals that said these surgeries are never performed either way.

State Sen. Bill DeMora (D-Columbus), who is on JCARR, issued a statement after the vote that said, “These rules have no legal basis, are not helpful, and just further show the depths that Ohio Republicans will go to make Ohio as inhospitable as possible to the most persecuted groups.”

The rules fall under the Ohio Department of Health’s purview and will be up to it to enforce.

It will take at least 10 days before the rules take effect.

House Bill 68 is set to go into effect in less than a week; it’s the state’s new law to ban these surgeries and other forms of gender-affirming care for minors. It is being challenged in court , but even if it ultimately tied up in a legal battle, the new rules will still stand.

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