Our Caroline Downey reports that Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has issued an “emergency” executive order banning “child gender-transition surgeries after receiving intense backlash last week for vetoing a bill with a broader but similar mandate.”
DeWine’s order would ban surgeries altering the sex characteristics of gender-confused children. Whereas the SAFE Act — which the governor vetoed — also would have prohibited the prescription of puberty-blocking and cross-sex hormones to minors (in addition to these surgeries) and kept males out of female sports.
Before DeWine’s order, Ohio Republicans were expected to vote to override his veto. Presumably, it’s with this humiliation in mind that DeWine is attempting to extend an olive branch, effectively telling his fellow Republicans that it’s not too late to find a consensus on the issue.
But whatever his reasoning, it’s not good enough. As we wrote in our editorial:
Ultimately, what Mike DeWine has missed, amid all the supposed testimony he referenced in his decision, is the truth: Given that the drugs and medical procedures at issue cause irreversible physical changes to children, it is those who support allowing them who should be required to meet a heavy evidentiary burden that they are necessary.
DeWine’s executive order is not a step in the right direction but a doubling down on his initial error. Caroline reports:
“A week has gone by, and I still feel just as firmly as I did that day,” DeWine said at a press conference Friday, defending his decision to veto the broader ban. “I believe the parents, not the government, should be making these crucial decisions for their children.”
What nonsense. There are laws banning minors from drinking, getting tattoos, smoking, driving, marrying, and having sex — all of which arguably pose less threat of lasting damage than the arrest of one’s natural development, sterilization, and being led down a pathway likely to end in the surgical amputation of healthy body parts.
The SAFE Act did not target parental rights. As our editorial explained, it protected them. What the act did do was outlaw medical malpractice on minors.
In 2021, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem faced fierce backlash after vetoing a bill protecting women’s sports. Noem’s version of damage control included claiming it was the method, not the message, she opposed. But she changed direction, too: hastily assembling a website dedicated to the protection of Title IX; issuing executive orders; and ultimately lobbying for and signing a very similar bill.
DeWine is attempting similar optics as Noem did but without learning the lesson about substance. When it comes to protecting minors from gender experiments, no half measures will do. Ohio Republicans should override his veto.