Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill to ban medical treatment for transgender minors, an unusual move for a Republican governor. The legislature has the power to override his veto. The governor said that the decision about such care should be made by the people who love the child most: parents.
In addition to banning transition care for minors, the bill says medical professionals who provide the care could lose their licenses and be sued. It also prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.
On Friday, Mr. DeWine said that if the bill were to become law, “Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.”
The governor reached his decision after visiting hospitals and meeting with families “both positively and negatively affected” by gender-affirming care last week, a spokesperson said…
In addition to banning transition care for minors, the bill says medical professionals who provide the care could lose their licenses and be sued. It also prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams that correspond with their gender identity…
This summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics commissioned a systematic review of medical research on the treatments, while still taking the position that they can be essential. Transgender adolescents have high rates of depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and some evidence suggests that puberty blockers and hormones, in the short-term, could improve their mental health.
“The most harrowing part of my job is informing parents that their child died, especially when their death was from a preventable suicide,’’ Dr. Steve Davis, chief executive of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, told Ohio senators at a hearing on the bill. “You trust us on every other condition. Please, trust us on this one.’’
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If a legislature feels empowered to micromanage physicians in one area of medicine, then the legislature can impose its authority over all branches of medicine.
yes
Too bad that the Republican Controlled Ohio Legislature doesn’t realize that patients, their doctors, and if they are children, their parents are the only ones who should be making medical decisions about their health and bodies. The GOP has forgotten that it was the party that freed the slaves and extended our human rights. They have become the party of the wealthy autocrats, religious fanatics, and would be dictators. They have gone from being the party that believed in “government by the people, of the people, and for the people” and have become the party of the few, of the rich, and for the Christian Nationalist Churches. We need a new fiscally conservative but socially liberal party to replace the horror that the GOP has become.
I feel the modern Democratic Party is exactly the thing you describe. Given the power, they would impose proper taxation on those capable of paying those taxes, allot expenditures based on general need, and support the alliances in foreign policy that protect justice and democracy worldwide.
Almost all of the top elected state officials in Ohio, including the Supreme Court justices, are Republican Catholics. Gov. Dewine has 8 kids. He and his wife were in an ad that aired in Ohio in August in support of an anti-democracy initiative. The initiative received funding of $900,000 from the archdioceses of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. Never the less, the state’s bishops publicly claimed they had no opinion on Issue 1 on the ballot in Aug. because it “had no moral content.”
I recommend reading Politico’s article, 12-29-2023, “Public Christian Schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause.”
The article predictably does not identify Leonard Leo as right wing Catholic with 9 kids but, it does describe a local person opposed to tax funding for Catholic schools as a “practicing Catholic.”
The article tells us that Alito is the honorary chair of a Leo- directed advisory council at Catholic University of America, “Constitution originalism and Catholic Intellectual Tradition”, funded with $4.5 mil. from an anonymous donor. Nicole Stelle Garnet is on the board and she is also on the board of the Federalist Society and is a Fellow at the Koch Manhattan Institute. She is good friends with Amy Comey Barrett
I live in Ohio, a right wing Catholic theocracy. How much of D.C. governance reflects right wing Catholic views should be the subject of scrutiny….beginning many years ago.
Linda long ago made obvious that she is a monomaniac, a total fanatic obsessed with anti-Catholic bigotry. This sentence confirms that fact beyond all doubt: “I live in Ohio, a right wing Catholic theocracy.”
Absurd beyond belief. Ohio is a theocracy like, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia? What a nutcase, extreme even when compared to the many other nutcases who regularly comment on this blog. BTW, I’m an agnostic who has no affiliation with or belief in any organized religion.
“Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology”
https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-vatican-conservatives-abortion-us-bbfc346c117bd9ae68a1963478bea6b3
What the Pope says is what Linda is talking about. Most if not all of the names in her comment are “backward” conservatives in the US Catholic Church.
And those backward Catholics are a dangerous threat to OUR democracy that is supported by OUR U.S. Constitution.
What we need now is an amendment that legalizes the separation of church and state at every level.
Religions should stay out of politics.
Second that, LLOYD! There are good reasons to separate church and state. Any religion that needs a public subsidy is lacking adherents.
“Some” downplays the number, money, influence and success.
The avoidance of truth has allowed the campaign to all but destroy the left in central states like Ohio and Indiana.
Thankfully, Michigan and Wisconsin returned as champions of democracy. But, Pennsylvania may not be as fortunate.
Thanks for your comment.
Partial listing of evidence-
(1) Akron Beacon Journal, Dec. 14, 1999, “Whose choice?
How school choice began in Ohio.”
(2) Every female child, who is above the age 9 and every woman in her childbearing ages, is at risk of death in Ohio.
A rape victim, 10 years old, had to leave the state to get an abortion because Ohio has laws passed by Koch-aligned
theocrats, an alliance of right wing Catholics and protestant evangelicals.
(3) Anti-LGBTQ laws in Ohio
(4) One of the top 5 spenders for anti-democracy Issue 1 in Ohio was the collective, 3 major city archdioceses. Another top spender was Robert P George-founded American Principles Project (Read at Wikipedia, George’s Manhattan Declaration signed by the bishops of 15 major cities).
(5) The successes of the paid lobbyists of the Catholic Conferences.
And, at the national level,
(6) SCOTUS’ Catholic majority exempted religious schools from civil rights employment law.
(7) Taxpayers have been forced to make Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer.
(8) The political spending and efforts against the ERA and against gay rights
(9) Jefferson’s quote, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot
Recently, Trump called Biden, “anti-Catholic.” Every person who attempts to quash dissent that exposes the wrong doing of Catholic organizations and the Church feeds situations like the widespread priest abuse and cover-up and, the jeopardy that a 10 year old rape victim is in, in states like Ohio.
In 2020, 63% of White Catholics who attend church regularly voted for the Putin-serving, womanizing Trump, a 3% increase from 2016. Forty percent of self-described evangelicals don’t attend church so, while the percentage of evangelicals supporting Trump is higher than for White Catholics, the number has to be discounted because their “evangelical” politics are not supported by the sophisticated voter mobilization and political apparatuses of the Catholic Church, nor by right wing religious media, the DC-based Catholic Information Center, DC-based universities like Catholic University of America whose board is cozy with Charles Koch and, they don’t have the hugely wealthy Knights of Columbus. Evangelicals don’t have one person on the SCOTUS nor, is the highly influential, Leonard Leo, a right wing protestant. His predecessor, the Koch-funded Paul Weyrich was right wing Catholic, like Leo.
I suggest everyone read the research at the Scielo site, “The official contents of sex education in Mexico: laicism in the crosshairs,” to understand one front in the threat posed by right wing Catholic theocracy.
Off topic -this month Pro Publica described a situation that reflects what happens to public institutions when Republicans are in charge
Pro Publica, 12.22.2023, “The University (public and in Virginia) uprooted a Black neighborhood then, its policies reduced the Black presence on campus.” The city in which the school is located is 44% Black. The school’s student population is 8% Black. Black professors number just 2.4%.
The University president was formerly a Republican senator. His tenure as president was from 1996-2022. The endowment went from $300,000 to $64 mil.
We see the outcome when money and privilege matter more than societal advancement and fairness.
Former GOP Sen. Trible of Virginia, when he was in political office, sent a letter printed on his government office stationery to state high school principals asking them to send students to a Christian prayer breakfast. The aim was “to demonstrate the relevance of Jesus Christ.”
Evidently, what Trible learned from Christ’s teachings was questionable. Betsy DeVos’ style of Christianity comes to mind when reading about Trible.
Government needs to stay out of medicine. Who wants uninformed individuals (who are not doctors) making decisions about your personal health care choices. It’s bad enough that insurance companies interfere with your medical needs by declining coverage for various procedures your doctor recommends because it is not cost effective.
Our elected officials, locally, statewide, and nationally, forget that we voted for them to protect our interests, not make our lives more difficult with their erroneous legislation which does more harm than good.