Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill this week that withholds COVID-19 relief funding from one of the state’s largest hospital systems until it ceases providing “transgender” children with “gender-affirming” care. This includes hormone therapy treatments, puberty blockers, and sex reassignment surgery.
Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at OU Health currently provides transgender health services for patients under 18. These services are provided to adults through 24 years of age. According to its website, the hospital 7collaborates with schools to provide transgender treatments and other services.
The bill signed into law by Stitt this week authorizes more than $100 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) for the University of Oklahoma Medical Center. However, the health system can only receive the funds if it ends its transgender services for those under 18 years of age.
“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,” Stitt said in a press release. He called on state lawmakers to ban all transgender surgeries and hormone therapy treatments on minors in the next legislative session.
I just signed SB3 to prevent gender transition services for minors at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital at OU Health.
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) October 4, 2022
This is just the first step.
I am calling on the Legislature to ban all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors statewide.
“I am calling for the Legislature to ban all irreversible gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors when they convene next session in February 2023. We cannot turn a blind eye to what’s happening all across our nation, and as governor I will not allow life-altering transition surgeries on minor children in the state of Oklahoma,” Stitt said.
On Wednesday, NBC reported that OU Health said in a statement to reporters that it is in the process of ending their transgender health program for minors.
"The OU Health Senior Leadership Team is proactively planning the ceasing of certain gender medicine services across our facilities and that plan is already under development," the hospital system said in a statement to news outlets.
Stitt, who is up for reelection in November, signed a law in March banning biological male “transgender” athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. This occurred in the aftermath of the Lia Thomas controversy, which I covered.
Last month, a group of transgender students sued the state over a law requiring them to use school restrooms and other facilities that align with their biological sex instead of their “gender identity.”
"Governor Stitt believes girls should use girl restrooms and boys should use boy restrooms," Stitt's spokesperson, Carly Atchison, said in a statement to The Oklahoman.
“It’s about safety, it’s about protection, it’s about common sense,” Republican state Rep. Danny Williams, the House author of the bill, said. “The goal of this bill is to protect our children.”