(BrightPress.org) – A Republican state senator from Louisiana has voted with Democrats to keep a bill outlawing transgender body modification for minors from coming to the floor. The bill, which passed the state house easily and would have a supermajority of Republican support in the state Senate, was stopped by a single Republican vote from state Senator Fred Mills in a 5-to-4 vote in the Health and Wellness Committee.
House Bill #648 or the “Stop Harming Our Kids Act” would ban the use of puberty blockers, hormones, and genital surgeries for minors. This has been a growing trend across moderate and conservative-leaning states, with 18 other states having already outlawed the controversial treatments and body modification due to the high rates of comorbid mental illnesses and issues with regret.
The bill had overwhelming support in the House, passing with a margin of 74-25, and would have outlawed allowing minors to receive a phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, or a female-to-male clitoris-enlarging modification called a metoidioplasty.
Representative Gabe Firment sponsored the bill and was “very disappointed” that it was kept from coming to the floor by a single vote despite broad popular support. He expressed the expectation that parents who want to allow these procedures may bring their children to Louisiana for access, as it’s the only state among its neighbors that hasn’t outlawed them. He told The Daily Wire that he intended to continue to fight to outlaw these practices as he believes they are harming kids.
He reminded his colleagues during a speech in the state House that these procedures are incredibly lucrative, citing the example of a single puberty-blocking implant that runs $50,000 each. Puberty blocking almost always leads children into taking hormones and ultimately surgeries; hormones can be brought back to normal with the help of an endocrinologist, but surgeries are permanent and usually impossible to reverse. Add in the fact that doctors and “gender specialists” continue to encourage clients and admonish parents about the possibility of suicidality if they don’t “affirm” their children.
Desistance tends to occur naturally, but only if kids are allowed to develop naturally. That doesn’t benefit pharmaceutical companies that donate to politicians like Fred Mills …however, life-long medical dependence does.
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