Florida is moving forward with its ban on puberty blockers and gender-altering surgeries for children.
The Florida Board of Medicine and the state’s Board of Osteopathic Medicine gave preliminary approval Friday to rulemaking language that would prevent both medical practices that are used to address gender dysphoria in the state, according to Politico.
The boards are scheduled to meet again Friday to finalize the rule.
Gender dysphoria is the condition in which a person’s sexual self-perception is different from his or her actual sex.
Speakers lobbied both for and against the proposed rule during the five-hour hearing.
“All the talk about mental health, self perception, pronouns and ideology leads me to the question: Why is a mental health epidemic not being addressed with mental health treatment to get at the root causes for why female adolescents like me want to reject their bodies?” said Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old who had a mastectomy at 15 years old that she regretted at 16, according to NBC News.
Parents of transgender children, meanwhile, opposed the rule because they argued that the ability for their children to change their genders was benefiting their mental health.
“At one point she came up to me, at about three-and-a-half years old, and begged me, crying, and said, ‘Please, don’t make me be this way anymore. This is not who I am. I want to die,’” said Hope McClay, the parent of a 9-year-old transgender girl, according to NBC.
Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry in March cited several studies that found the surgeries and puberty blockers help the health and well-being of transgender children.
But National Review cited reports that show roughly three-quarters of children usually outgrow their gender dysphoric conditions.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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