The Ohio Senate executed the will of the majority of its constituents on Wednesday when it voted to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of legislation that would end transgender child mutilation and ban men from invading women’s sports in the state in the Buckeye State.
DeWine vetoed HB 68 in December 2023 under the guise that gender-confused kids will commit suicide without transgender mutilations or opposite-sex hormones. He justified his stance with Democrat rhetoric fueled by junk science, unreliable surveys, and testimony from gender-crazed parents.
“Many parents have told me that their child would not have survived, would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from one of Ohio’s children’s hospitals. I’ve also been told by those who are now grown adults that but for this care, they would have taken their lives when they were teenagers,” DeWine claimed.
The governor’s decision didn’t sit well with his voters or the legislature. Despite DeWine’s scrambling to sign a short-term executive order that only prohibited mutilating children’s genitals, both the Republican-controlled state House and now the Senate voted to overrule his formal objection and ban the chemical and surgical mutilation of gender-confused children.
Thanks to those Republican legislators, the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act” is now law. Not only does Ohio now prohibit gender experimentation on its youngest, most vulnerable residents, but it also became the 24th state to protect female sports from male infiltration.
“Now and always, young people deserve the loving embrace of family members who guide them toward this truth rather than be subjected to risky, often irreversible, and life-altering experimentation and drugs. These approaches are dangerous, as they block healthy puberty, alter hormonal balance, and remove healthy organs and body parts. No one has the right to harm children, and, thankfully, states have the power—and duty—to protect them. Ohio joins more than 20 other states and several European countries in fighting for truth and curtailing the deployment of harmful surgeries and drugs that are devastating countless lives,” Matt Sharp, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel and director of ADF’s Center for Legislative Advocacy, said in a statement.
