Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey is taking extensive measures to protect children from the radical Left’s agenda.
Last week, Bailey issued an emergency hotline website so that people can report cases of affirmative care on minors.
It's about protecting children for me," Bailey told Fox News Digital. "We've got to inject some sanity into this conversation. Gender is an objective reality defined by biology, in the same way, that gravity is an objective reality. It is unhealthy to deny objective reality."
According to the regulation, the state has seen a massive increase in transgender surgeries despite preliminary studies showing its long-term side effects, both mentally and physically, on a child.
“Skyrocketing number of gender transition interventions despite rising concerns in the medical community that these procedures are experimental and lack clinical evidence of safety or success,” the press release read.
Bailey said that affirmative care surgeries are subject to Missouri law due to its unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable business practice of an experimental procedure.
“This is nothing short of child abuse masquerading as medicine, and we've got to stand up, take it seriously and put a stop to this,” Bailey said.
Patients must be warned that the FDA has not approved puberty and hormone blockers to treat gender dysphoria, cautioning that they can lead to life-threatening issues such as brain swelling and blindness. The regulation also demands patients be told of the recent declaration from Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare that the risks of puberty-suppressing drugs and cross-sex hormones for minors "currently outweigh the benefits."
Providers must also inform patients of scientific studies that found transgender identity can emerge because of social factors.
The regulation also bans gender transition intervention if a healthcare provider does not take the necessary steps to evaluate a child with a psychological or psychiatric screen for mental health comorbidities and autism. Patients must also give written consent, track any side effects from any gender transition intervention and annually check if the patient has been subject to "social contagion."
Bailey’s regulation comes in the wake of an investigation that his office is leading where the whistleblower issued a complaint against the Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
A former case manager at the hospital's transgender center said in an affidavit that when she was employed at the hospital from 2018 until 2022 as a case manager, she was accused of lying to the patient's parents.
Bailey pointed out the political and financial incentives of performing transgender surgeries.
“I think there are those who would rather push a radical Left-wing ideology than protect children, and they will harm children in their march toward this radical left-wing ideology," Bailey said. "But then there's a money component, as well.”