In landmark legislation, Republican lawmakers unite to enact a law that will ban doctors from performing gender-altering sex surgery on children. This bill will prohibit minors from making irreversible decisions about their bodies before they become fully adults.
This bill succeeds the legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is also aiming for presidential nomination in Republican primaries. In May 2023, DeSantis enacted a law that would prohibit minors from acquiring gender-altering care, and penalize doctors who agreed to perform surgery or hormonal treatments on children.
The law, also known as Senate Bill 256, will charge any physicians or health care workers with first-degree misdemeanor and allow state courts to take physical custody of a minor who is “being subjected to sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures.”
The Florida Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine had earlier implemented policies that prohibit anyone under 18 from acquiring hormone treatments and surgery unless they are already receiving such treatments.
A provision in the law also requires adults who are seeking to alter their gender to present a consent form and prohibits them from receiving such care through telemedicine.
At the same time, DeSantis also signed bills that ban businesses from admitting minors from watching “adult live performances,” particularly drag shows, prohibiting faculty from calling their students pronouns that do not match their genders at birth and penalizing individuals who use public bathrooms that are not their genders at birth.
Similar legislation has been passed by at least 13 states across the United States. The laws limit the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgery on minors. Idaho, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, and North Dakota have adopted these new policies since April 2023 while lawmakers in Nebraska and Texas have been proposing similar laws.
DeSantis quipped after the session, “You can’t use euphemisms on this stuff.”
“If you have a minor child, you should not be doing sex-change operations. You should not be doing puberty blockers. That is wrong, and we’re glad that we put a stop to that in the state of Florida.”
He further said, “It is wrong to be sexualizing these kids.”
“It’s wrong to have gender ideology and tell kids that they may have been born in the wrong body.”
The Florida governor also remarked, “We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago? Now, they’re having third graders declare pronouns. We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida.”
