New Hampshire House Approves Ban on Transgender Surgeries for Kids

Another victory for the movement to protect children from predatory trans therapies underscores that the trend away from LGBT acceptance is growing.

On Thursday, the Republican-dominated New Hampshire House of Representatives approved a bill banning sex-change surgeries from being performed on minors. It is now going to the Senate, where it is expected to also pass. Ultimately, the bill’s fate will be in the hands of Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican.

As The Hill reports, House Bill 619 was originally going to ban all sex-change treatments on minors. However, an amendment resulted in legislation that targets genital surgeries only, while continuing to allow hormones and puberty blockers.

Even the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society have said that such genital surgeries are not recommended for anyone under the age of 18. New Hampshire’s bill would also prevent physicians from referring minors out of state to receive transgender genital surgeries.

HB 619 made its way through the New Hampshire House with bipartisan support; 12 Democrats joined with the Republican caucus to pass the bill. Only two Republicans voted against it.

On the same day that HB 619 was approved, the New Hampshire House passed HB 396, which allows for individuals to be classified “based on biological sex” for purposes of athletics, public restrooms, and prisons.

HB 619’s language covers all gender transition surgeries, including penectomies, orchiectomies, vaginoplasties, clitoroplasties, vulvoplasties, phalloplasties, vaginectomies, and scrotoplasties. The bill specifically does not ban “services to persons born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development,” not does it extend to the treatment of injuries, infections, or diseases caused by the prohibited surgeries.

The New Hampshire Bulletin reports:

If signed into law by Sununu, New Hampshire would be the 21st state to enact such a ban, after Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia….

“Until 16 months ago, these procedures were prohibited by (medical) guidelines,” said Rep. Erica Layon, a Derry Republican [and] one of the bill’s sponsors, referring to guidelines released in September 2022 detailing how to conduct surgeries for minors by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Layon argued that the state should bar the procedure[s] until more data is available from states that do offer the procedures to minors. “We need to wait,” she said. “We need to pause.”

Rep. Dan Hynes, who was elected as a Republican but has switched to independent, voted and spoke against the bill, using the language of parental rights and medical freedom — often employed by conservatives — against legislation that is championed by most conservatives in the country.

“This amendment goes against parental rights, and goes against medical freedom, particularly for patients to be able to decide whether they get that treatment, which could prevent their suicide, which is also irreversible,” said Hynes.

All eyes are on Sununu, who may be a Republican but — like many members of the GOP in New Hampshire — is more liberal on some issues than his fellow Republicans in other states. For example, Sununu signed bills that ban job discrimination against transgenders and against use of the “gay panic defense,” a legal tactic in which defendants of a crime blame their actions on unwanted sexual advances made by a gay person.

On the other hand, Sununu joined with most of the GOP governors in the country in opposing a proposed rule by the Biden White House establishing a right for trans athletes to compete in accordance with their preferred gender identity even if it differs from their actual sex.

Thus, Sununu is the wild card and could conceivably go either way on the issue after HB 619 makes its way through the Legislature.

Several surveys have found that a majority of Americans do not favor bending on major trans issues such as transgenders in girls’ sports, bathroom access, and trans therapies for minors. A survey by the University of Houston found that even in California, twice as many respondents (53 percent vs. 26 percent) said “no” when it came to allowing males to play in female sports and a plurality (41 percent vs. 35 percent) believe in banning gender transition procedures for people under 18.

“While we expected restrictive responses from conservative Texas and moderate Arizona, it was interesting to see the same attitudes hold, although less firmly, in the progressive state of California,” said Mark P. Jones, a researcher at the University of Houston who was involved with the survey.

Transgenderism has become as prevalent as it is in modern Western society due to constant propaganda in entertainment and the schools. Yet, even with this social engineering, roughly a majority of the country — including in liberal places such as California — wants to limit it.

Given these statistics and the political success of anti-trans legislation, could it be that the “Trans Moment” has come to an end?