New Hampshire expected to BAN transgender surgeries for minors

01/11/2024 / By Laura Harris

New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is expected to sign the bill banning specific transgender-related surgeries for minors.

Lawmakers in the state recently passed House Bill 619 in a mostly party-line vote of 199 in favor to 175 against. HB 619 now moves to the New Hampshire Senate, which has a Republican majority. If signed into law by Sununu, who is known as a moderate Republican more supportive of LGBT rights, healthcare providers working in the state would be restricted from performing certain genital surgeries on minors and prevent them from referring minors to out-of-state partners to circumvent the ban.

The original version of the bill sought to ban a broader range of transgender surgeries, including so-called “gender-affirming” mastectomies and the prescription of pharmaceutical interventions for transgender youth like cross-sex hormones and puberty-blocking drugs. These more expansive restrictions were dropped in the final version of the bill, which was seen as more palatable to the more moderate-leaning Republicans in the state legislature.

State Rep. Gerri Cannon, a self-identified transgender individual and a Democrat, argued that lawmakers should not have the power to dictate how care providers handle their transgender patients.

Meanwhile, in a clear sign of how this bill has bipartisan support, Democratic state Rep. Jonah Wheeler supported the bill, noting the irreversible nature of certain surgeries for children.

“Despite being a liberal who believes in human rights, I do not think that children should be able to get irreversible surgery,” said Wheeler.

In 2023, more states across America also enforced bans on transgender surgeries for minors. (Related: More conservative states ban gender-affirming procedures for minors.)

According to the Equality Federation, an advocacy accelerator working with state-based LGBTQIA+ organizations, 23 states have already implemented laws prohibiting gender surgeries for minors, with each state having distinct provisions and implications. If Sununu signs HB 619, New Hampshire would be the 24th state to do so.

Arkansas pioneered the move in 2021, when it banned child sex changes, holding healthcare providers accountable to civil action if they performed gender transition procedures on minors. Then Gov. Asa Hutchinson tried to block the bill with a veto, but this veto was overridden by the state legislature.

Other states that have passed bans include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. The degree to which these states protect minors from being subjected to sex change procedures varies.

In some of these states, lawsuits have prevented the ban from being fully enforced. In others, like in Indiana, judges have filed preliminary injunctions preventing parts of the laws from being enforced like bans on puberty blockers and hormone treatments, but allowed restrictions on surgeries to remain in force.

Head over to Gender.news for more stories about the pushback against transgenderism.

Watch the video below that talks about protecting the youth from transgenderism’s false ideology.

This video is from the Flyover Conservatives channel on Brighteon.com.