The Ohio Senate voted on Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would ban gender transition procedures for minors and prohibit male athletes from playing on female sports teams.
The state Senate voted 23-9 to override the veto. The state House voted 65-28 to do the same earlier this month. Republicans have a majority in both chambers.
The vote mostly followed party lines, except for state Sen. Nathan Manning, a Cuyahoga County Republican who consistently breaks from his party on the issue.
Mr. DeWine vetoed the bill in late December, to the chagrin of his party, telling reporters during a press conference that such a measure, if allowed to become law, would do more harm than good.
The bill, also known as the Saving Ohio Adolescents from Experimentation Act, would ban doctors from performing gender-related surgeries and administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors.
Other provisions of the bill would bar schools from allowing male athletes to join female sports teams in high schools and colleges, reflecting a nationwide trend to address concerns about fairness in women’s sports.
The ban is set to take effect in 90 days.
Advocates of the bill argue that irreversible interventions related to individuals’ favored gender identity can have long-term consequences, urging instead for a shift toward compassionate mental health care and therapy for minors.
Ohio has joined North Carolina and Louisiana in overriding the governor’s veto to enact similar bans.
Republican State Rep. Gary Click, the bill’s primary sponsor, celebrated the Senate vote and stressed that the disagreement between the legislative and executive branches was about policy, not personality.
Mr. Click said he is confident that Mr. DeWine, in vetoing the bill, acted from the heart and did what he believed was right. He added that, in time, the governor may have come around to the stance of his fellow Republicans on the matter.
“The legislature, however, felt just as strongly if not more so that HB 68 was imperative to save lives, uphold medical ethics, and reaffirm women’s rights,” Mr. Click said in a statement. “The citizens of Ohio were unequivocal in their demand that the legislature act and we did.”
Mr. Click celebrated the veto as a move that ensures “children have the right to grow up intact and that women are no longer subject to men invading their spaces.”
LGBT rights groups, such as Human Rights Campaign, have condemned the legislation, calling the ban “draconian and discriminatory.” The organization has said the bill prevents young people from accessing “best practice, medically necessary health care in defiance of the expert advice of every major medical association.”
However, groups in support of the ban, such as Alliance Defending Freedom, say it protects children from the harm of irreversible procedures.
Senior Counsel Matt Sharp, director of the ADF Center for Legislative Advocacy, applauded the Ohio Senate’s action.
“We commend the Ohio Senate for overriding Gov. Mike DeWine’s misguided veto of the SAFE Act, a bill that rejects the politicized and harmful practice of pushing minors towards irreversible drugs and surgeries in favor of compassionate mental health care that gives them time to grow into comfort with their bodies and true identities,” Mr. Sharp said in a statement.
Mr. Sharp said that denying there are two sexes risks harm to children who may experience gender dysphoria, and need their families to “guide them toward this truth” rather than undergo often irreversible and life-altering experimentation and drugs.
Gender dysphoria is described as discomfort felt about one’s sex. Recent approaches to treatment have been typically to encourage the individual, usually a minor, to undergo surgery or chemical treatments so that they can force their body to look more like the gender they identify with, including by taking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even surgical procedures to remove breast tissue or genitals. Some who have undergone such treatments have later said they felt tricked into it and expressed regret, saying that while the interventions brought temporary relief, they later realized they had deeper underlying mental health issues that were causing their internal distress.
Mr. Sharp said these approaches to treating gender dysphoria—which block healthy puberty, alter a person’s hormonal balance, or remove healthy organs and body parts—“are dangerous.”
“No one has the right to harm children and, thankfully, states have the power—and duty—to protect them. Ohio joins more than 20 other states and several European countries in fighting for truth and curtailing the deployment of harmful surgeries and drugs that are devastating countless lives,” he added.
After the state House vote, Mr. DeWine reiterated his belief that parents should be allowed to make medical decisions on behalf of their children rather than the government.
Despite moving to veto the legislation, in January, the governor signed an executive order that critics labeled a “de facto ban” on such procedures for minors and adults.
