On Friday, Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine, one week after vetoing legislation that would have prohibited care for kids, unveiled new administrative restrictions intended to limit transgender adults’ access to gender-affirming medical care.
At a news conference, DeWine announced that Ohio’s Department of Health and Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services would be releasing regulations for public comment on Friday. These regulations, assuming they go into effect, will give transgender individuals and minors receiving care more safeguards.
According to him, transgender adults who want access to hormone therapy will have to hire a multidisciplinary team that includes a psychiatrist, a bioethicist, and an endocrinologist, among others. Currently, transgender adults in Ohio may only see one doctor, while treatment regimens vary depending on the needs of each patient.
DeWine stated on Friday, “To be honest, as I said a week ago, I am concerned that there might be fly-by-night providers and clinics that might be giving medication to adults without any counseling and without any fundamental standards to assure quality care.” “We will take care of that with the rules we are announcing today. We must make sure that both adults and children are safeguarded.
According to DeWine, before transgender persons can be evaluated for any medical interventions, they must first get from their clinicians a “comprehensive care plan” that includes “lengthy” mental health therapy.
DeWine’s proposal, which would be among the strictest in the country for transgender adults seeking access to gender-affirming medical care, is likely to exacerbate financial hardship on those seeking such care and create a resource bottleneck.
Since May, when most Florida healthcare professionals were no longer allowed to perform gender-affirming services due to a bill passed by Governor Ron DeSantis (R), thousands of transgender adults have found it difficult to obtain prescription drugs.
DeWine also announced a second regulation that mandates health care providers in Ohio submit de-identified data on incidents of gender dysphoria and the treatments that follow.
To put it simply, no one will be able to examine the data and determine who it belongs to, according to DeWine. “We always take this action to preserve privacy.”
“In Ohio, aggregate data is routinely reported,” DeWine continued. “This includes information on food poisoning causes, flu cases, and abortion rates.” Legislators, the public, and policymakers use this data to help them make educated decisions.
Additionally, the governor issued an executive order on Friday banning minors from having gender-affirming procedures. After Arizona did so in 2022, this state is the second to expressly forbid minors from having surgery.
Guidelines established by the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health state that transgender children and adolescents under the age of 18 should not have gender-affirming surgery.
At a press conference on December 29, DeWine referred to the idea that such surgeries were being carried out on juveniles in Ohio as “a fallacy” when declaring his veto of House Bill 68, which had attempted to outlaw gender-affirming medical care for minors in its entirety.
Speaking with families of transgender children and medical professionals during the latter few weeks of 2023, DeWine stated on Friday that the executive order is “a good way to take this issue off the table and assure everyone that there are no surgeries going on with minors.”
DeWine stated on Friday, “You can’t prove a negative; I can’t say that there has never been a surgery on a minor.” “There is no way for me to know that. Other than being informed that there are no surgeries involving kids, that is all I know about the matter.
“But once more, we ought to outlaw them if they exist,” he declared.
DeWine’s decision to reject House Bill 68, which would have prohibited transgender women and girls from participating on female school sports teams, has been met with harsh condemnation from extreme Republicans, such as DeSantis, the GOP presidential candidate, and former President Trump.
Next week, there will likely be a vote in Ohio’s Republican-controlled House to override DeWine’s veto. With veto-proof majorities, the law was approved by the state Senate as well as the House.