Wyoming becomes latest state to outlaw ‘gender-affirming care’ for those under 18

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States banning “gender-affirming care” for minors are on the verge of becoming the rule rather than the exception.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon has signed legislation banning the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors seeking to change their sex, making the Cowboy State the 23rd to restrict medicalized gender transitions for those under 18.

Mr. Gordon, a Republican, said he signed Senate File 99 despite his misgivings about the government superseding the rights of parents in determining medical care for their children.

“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,” Mr. Gordon said Friday in a statement. “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.”

The bill includes exceptions for children born with chromosomal abnormalities, as well as precocious puberty, a condition in which children develop sexual characteristics before age 8 or 9.

Healthcare providers including physicians and pharmacists who violate the law would be subject to having their medical licenses revoked.

KIDS ARE SAVED in Wyoming!!!

Governor Gordon signed SF99 to put age restrictions on gender experimentation for minors.

Thank you to the bill sponsor @AnthonyBouchard and others that were so outspoken on child safety. pic.twitter.com/wzV7DPPjQE

— Chloe Cole ⭐️ (@ChoooCole) March 22, 2024

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, argued that such bans “prevent transgender youth from accessing medically necessary, safe health care backed by decades of research and supported by every major medical association.”

That stance took a hit earlier this month when Environmental Progress released internal emails from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the international authority, showing that its experts “frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along.”

“Members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of ‘gender-affirming care,’ and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents,” said Environmental Progress, headed by journalist Michael Shellenberger, in its March 4 press release.

Terry Schilling, American Principles Project president, cheered the passage of the Wyoming law, saying that the “transgender industry’s house of cards is beginning to collapse.”

He noted that the National Health Service England banned last week the use of puberty blockers for children.

“We’ve seen leaks exposing the flagship group pushing sex changes for minors — the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) — as a sham medical organization,” Mr. Schilling said. “And we’re now seeing more states here in the U.S. continue to press forward in protecting kids.”

WPATH released a statement last year condemning “the broad and sweeping legislation being introduced and ratified in states across the country to ban access to gender-affirming health care.”

“Anti-transgender health care legislation is not about protections for children but about eliminating transgender persons on a micro and macro scale,” WPATH President Marci Bowers said in a March 2023 statement. “It is a thinly veiled attempt to enforce the notion of a gender binary.”

Several state bills banning gender-transition drugs and surgeries for minors have been challenged in court.

Arkansas passed the first such law in 2021, but it was struck down by a federal judge last June. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted Attorney General Tim Griffin’s request in October for a hearing before the full court.

In January, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral argument on a legal challenge to the state’s 2023 ban on gender-transition drugs and surgeries for minors.