Wyoming governor signs bill outlawing gender-reassignment procedures on children, vetoes abortion restrictions
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Wyoming’s Republican Governor Mark Gordon signed into legislation Friday a bill outlawing gender-reassignment procedures on children and vetoed a bill that would have imposed further restrictions on abortion clinics, including required licensure.
SF0099, also titled “Children gender change prohibition,” prohibits physicians from performing gender-reassignment procedures on children and administering related medications. The legislation specifically banned “a surgery that sterilizes the child, including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty.”
The legislation continued on to specify that outlawed medications under the legislation included “any of the following prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility,” proceeded by a list of medications, including “puberty suppression or blocking prescription drugs to stop or delay normal puberty.”
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The bill also outlined various procedures that were exempt from the legislation, such as procedures or treatments performed on a child as a result of “a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development.” The legislation specified that parental/guardian consent was required.
“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 released. “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.”
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Gordon also vetoed HB0148, known as “Regulation of abortions,” that would have placed additional restrictions on abortion clinics in the state. The press release 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.”
The legislation would have required a surgical abortion facility in the state to be licensed as “an ambulatory surgical center,” and a facility conducting the procedures would need a separate license as well.
“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 in the statement. “The potential of starting over on a new course of legal arguments would in my mind be derelict, and would have only sacrificed additional unborn lives in Wyoming.”
Abortion is currently legal in Wyoming, pending a court decision challenging the state’s abortion laws.
On the national scale, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday about the federal government’s approval process of the drug mifepristone, a medication used to terminate pregnancies. A ruling is expected about three months later.
The Supreme Court is currently allowing the FDA to continue regulating the drug while the appeals process plays out. Such regulation includes continued telemedicine prescriptions and retail pharmacy dispensing.
Fox News’ Shannon Bream, Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.