Montana Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill into law on Friday that restricts gender surgeries and therapies for minors, becoming at least the 15th state to pass legislation protecting young people.
BREAKING: Republican Governor of Montana Greg Gianforte Signs Law Banning Transgender 'Care' for Minors. The bill prohibits transitional hormone treatments and surgeries for transgender people under 18. His son, who is nonbinary, had urged him to reject the bill. But, the… pic.twitter.com/o9Tr5erYZ2
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 29, 2023
The bill, which prohibits transitional hormone treatments and surgeries for transgender people under 18, caused major controversy. During debates over the measure, trans legislator Rep. Zooey Zephyr claimed on the House floor that anyone who supported the law would have “blood on their hands” and that outlawing transition procedures would be “tantamount to torture.”
After that breach of decorum, Republican Speaker Matt Regier demanded that Zephyr apologize before being allowed to speak again in the chamber. She refused, and on Monday protesters from the gallery shut down proceedings with chants and yelling.
Zephyr cheered them on. Seven protesters were arrested.
I’m just stunned that we’ve gotten to a place where we have to pass laws to protect these minors from abuse. Just five years ago this would have been offensive to most people.
— Elinor Gilbert (@Egcomm3) April 29, 2023
The governor didn’t speak about the bill’s signing Friday, but his office released a statement:
“He [Gianforte] is committed to protecting Montana’s children from invasive medical treatments that can permanently alter their healthy, developing bodies,” the governor’s spokeswoman, Kaitlin Price, said in an email.
Republicans in Montana have been particularly aggressive in their attempts to clap back at the transgender ideology that is being force-fed to us by the media, academia, and even the Pediatrics Academy:
[Montana] Republican legislators have characterized transition care as harmful and experimental, arguing that young people should not be allowed to begin medically transitioning before they become adults. But major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, support this care and say that bans pose serious mental health risks to young people.
The bill signed on Friday, Senate Bill 99, was just one of a slate of measures focused on gender identity that the Montana legislature has been advancing this month, including one that would define sex in binary terms and one that would bar public school students from changing their pronouns without parental permission.
Zephyr thinks the bill is “unconscionable”:
“I know that this is an unconstitutional bill. It is as cruel as it is unconstitutional. And it will go down in the courts,” Zephyr said. To trans youth she added: “There’s an understandable inclination towards despair in these moments, but know that we are going to win and until then, lean on community, because we will have one another’s backs.”
In the crazy upside world we’re living in, it’s “cruel” to oppose life-altering, experimental procedures that have multiple side effects and which have led many who have undergone them to regret their choice. Similarly, you will have “blood on your hands” if you oppose… having children go under the knife.
With this bill, Montana is fighting back against the tyrannical, rage-filled “gender-affirming” care lobby and their bizarre obsession with allowing kids to mutilate themselves.
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