Alabama Law Banning Child Gender Transition Surgeries Goes Into Effect

A law banning transgender surgery and drugs for minors took effect on Sunday after the law was signed in April.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law that made providing hormone treatments, transition surgery, or puberty blockers to anyone under 19 years old in the state punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Ivey said in a statement when she signed the bill last month that “if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl.”

“We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life,” she added.

Republican state Rep. Wes Allen, who sponsored the bill in the Alabama House of Representatives, said in April that the legislation is about protecting minors.

“It’s about protecting these minors,” Allen said. “And it’s not about adults, but it’s about those minors. Their minds are not fully developed to make these decisions on these medications and surgeries.”

Alabama’s law makes it the second state to attempt to ban puberty blockers for minors, and the first state to enact such a law. In April 2021, Arkansas passed a similar bill that was vetoed by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson because he said it was too broad.

“The law is very similar to legislation passed in Florida banning teachers from teaching on the issues between kindergarten and third grade. Critics dubbed the legislation, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the ‘don’t say gay” bill,” Fox News reported.

U.S. District Judge Liles Burke concluded a hearing on Friday regarding a lawsuit by the Human Rights Campaign and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders that is attempting to temporarily stop enforcement of the law while the suit is pending.

“The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the case, saying the Alabama law ‘violated the equal protection clause’ of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment,” according to a Reuters report.

In addition to Alabama, twenty states have similar bills under consideration, according to the group Freedom for All Americans.

This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.