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Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed on Friday a bill that outlaws gender-reassignment surgeries for minors, making Wyoming the 24th state in the nation to ban such practices.
SF0099, also titled “Children gender change prohibition,” bars physicians from performing gender-reassignment surgeries on children or prescribing related medications, such as hormone blockers. The legislation specifically outlaws “a surgery that sterilizes the child, including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty.”
The legislation further prohibits “any of the following prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility,” followed by a list of medications. Prohibited medications include “puberty suppression or blocking prescription drugs to stop or delay normal puberty.”
“I signed SF99 because I support the protections this bill includes for children, however, it is my belief that the government is straying into the personal affairs of families” Gordon said in a statement. “Our legislature needs to sort out its intentions with regard to parental rights. While it inserts governmental prerogative in some places, it affirms parental rights in others.”
With Gordon’s signature, Wyoming became the 24th U.S. state to outlaw “gender affirming care” for minors.
While the governor opted to sign the parental rights legislation, he did veto a separate bill that would have placed additional restrictions on abortion clinics in the state. A press release from Gordon’s office noted that the bill would have “properly regulated surgical abortion clinics in Wyoming,” but “amendments to the bill complicated its purpose, making it vulnerable to legal challenges.”
That legislation would have required abortion facilities in the state to be classified as “an ambulatory surgical center,” in addition to increased licensing requirements for facilities that perform abortions.
“It is my opinion that HB148, as amended, had the potential to further delay the resolution of this critical issue for the unborn,” Gordon said. “The potential of starting over on a new course of legal would in my mind be derelict, and would have only sacrificed additional unborn lives in Wyoming.”
