The Republican governor of North Dakota. Doug Burgum has signed into law a bill that would restrict transgender health care in the state, making it an immediate crime to provide gender-affirming care to people under the age of 18.

Gender-affirming care for minors has been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations, but it has come under increasing fire in many conservative legislatures, including that of North Dakota, where lawmakers have passed at least three anti- trans accounts this year.

The measure Burgum signed into law Wednesday received veto-resistant support from GOP lawmakers, though some Republicans voted against it, in addition to all Democrats.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Burgum said the law is designed to protect children from the life-changing consequences of sex reassignment surgery.

add, but he added

that medical professionals have tested that these surgeries have not been and will not be performed on minors in North Dakota.

He said the law still allows drug treatment, with parental consent, for early puberty and other rare conditions, and that minors currently receiving gender-affirming care can still receive treatment.

In the future, thoughtful debate about this complex medical policy should reflect compassion and understanding for all youth in North Dakota and their families, he said.

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The new law takes effect immediately

authorizeallow

prosecutors to charge a healthcare provider with a crime

punishable by

to 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines for performing sex reassignment surgery on a minor.

So it

empowersenables

prosecutors to charge a provider with a crime

punishable by

up to 360 days in jail and $3,000 in fines for giving a trans child sex-affirming drugs, such as puberty blockers.

North Dakota’s American Civil Liberties Union denounced the new law as a massive government overreach that undermines basic parental rights and violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process by singlesing out gender-affirming care for prohibition.

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By signing this bill into law, Gov. Burgum has tasked the government with making critical decisions traditionally reserved for parents in North Dakota,” Cody Schuler, the group’s advocacy group, said in a statement. This ban will not stop North Dakotans from being trans, but it will deny them critical support that helps struggling transgender youth grow into thriving transgender adults.

Burgum also signed a ban on transgender athletes earlier this month

likewise

passed by veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. In 2021, Burgum vetoed one

comparable

account

that would have imposed a ban on transgender athletes

but the House and Senate lawmakers then did not have enough votes to override his veto.

North Dakota joins at least 13 other states that have enacted laws restricting or prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors.

Lawmakers in GOP states are focusing on medical care for trans children

Republican lawmakers across the country have passed hundreds of measures this year targeting nearly every facet of trans existence.

That includes bans on gender-affirming care for minors, restrictions on which restrooms transgender people can use, measures restricting classroom teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity, and bills that sideline transgender students who want teachers to address them with the pronouns they use.

The Food and Drug Administration approved puberty blockers 30 years ago to treat children with precocious puberty, a condition that causes sexual development to begin much earlier than normal. Sex hormones synthetic forms of estrogen and testosterone were approved decades ago to treat hormone disorders or as birth control pills.

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The FDA has not specifically approved the drugs to treat gender-questioning youth, but they have been used off-label for that purpose for many years, a common and accepted practice for many medical conditions. Doctors who treat transgender patients say those decades of use are proof that the treatments aren’t experimental.

Research has shown that transgender youth and adults can be prone to suicidal behavior when forced to live as the gender they were assigned at birth. And critics of legislation to restrict gender-affirming care for children say it is an attempt by conservatives to motivate their voters.

Proponents of the measure have expressed concern about children changing their minds. Still, the evidence suggests that detransition is not as common as opponents of transgender medical treatment for young people claim, though studies are few and they have their weaknesses.