Wednesday 5 October 2022 07:21 PM Oklahoma Governor blocks $108M grant from being used to for transgender ... trends now
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has signed a bill that effectively bans gender- reassignment drugs from being prescribed to children.
The Republican is withholding Covid relief funds from the state's pediatric hospital system unless it stops providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors.
Oklahoma Children's Hospital at OU Health has been allocated $108million in federal funds as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.
But under Stitt's new bill, the hospital can only receive the funds if it ceases all gender-affirming medical care on those under 18.
Gov. Stitt said Tuesday: 'By signing this bill today we are taking the first step to protect children from permanent gender transition surgeries and therapies.'
'It is wildly inappropriate for taxpayer dollars to be used for condoning, promoting, or performing these types of controversial procedures on healthy children,' he said.
The University of Oklahoma hospital system currently offers the life-altering drugs to children over the age of 16. Around 100 patients are currently receiving treatment.
Stitt also called for the GOP-controlled Legislature to ban some of those gender-affirming treatments statewide when it returns in February.
He said in a statement that he wanted a prohibition on 'all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies' on minors.
Stitt has signed bills to limit transgender children in sports as well as a bathroom bill that blocks students from using the restroom that reflects their gender identity.
The bill stipulates that those services include 'interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics, interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's gender identity, and medical therapies and medical intervention used to treat gender dysphoria.'
The bill's language takes particular aim at OU Children's Adolescent Medicine Roy G. Biv program.
The hospital currently offers transition care such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and help finding surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries for people up to age 24.
