A Republican state senator in Louisiana joined Democrats on a vote to kill a bill that would ban transgender surgeries on children in the state.
Sex-change surgeries on children has become a hot-topic issue across the country.
Republican state Senator Fred Mills joined Democrats in a 5-4 vote on the Health and Welfare Committee to block the advancement of a bill that would have banned using cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery “to alter a minor’s appearance in an attempt to validate a minor’s perception of his sex, if the minor’s perception is inconsistent with his sex.”
The bill had previously passed the House in a vote of 71-24, before it was moved along to the Republican-dominated state Senate.
Included in the bill was a prohibition on transgender surgeries, including those “that artificially constructs tissue having the appearance of genitalia differing from the minor’s sex, including metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, and vaginoplasty.”
It was sponsored by Republican Representative Gabe Firment and called the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act.”
“This bill simply protects kids from harm by ending the use of unproven, experimental, and irreversible chemical and surgical procedures on children in Louisiana suffering from a condition called gender dysphoria,” Firment said during his testimony at the Wednesday committee hearing.
“These children deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and our best served by compassionate and effective mental health care and counseling.”
“Senators, when you hear testimony from those in the healthcare field opposed to this bill, I want you to consider how lucrative these experimental procedures are for the gender industry. A single subcutaneous implant of a puberty blocking agent can cost up to $50,000,” Firment added.
“We know that starting kids on puberty blockers practically always leads to injecting children with extraordinary doses of wrong-sex hormones, then to mutilating surgeries, and then to being lifelong customers of the gender industry and big pharma.”
Firment said that he was worried that Louisiana would become a destination for people in other states in the South to bring their kids for transgender procedures since lawmakers have taken action in nearby Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.
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