Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis clapped back at a reporter asking about his state prohibiting sex reassignment surgeries for minors.
The Florida Board of Medicine voted in October to ban puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgeries for children under the age of 18 after hearing testimony from detransitioners such as Chloe Cole. A reporter asked the governor if American voters want a ban on these procedures for their children.
“How many of these people were paid to come, I mean honestly, it’s like, seriously,” DeSantis said. “Some of this stuff is just totally manufactured, and when you talk to people — and I know people in your industry will dress it up with a euphemism and they’ll say it’s ‘healthcare’ to cut off the private parts of a 14- or 15-year-old, that is not healthcare. That is mutilation. So when we are standing up against that, we’re protecting these kids.”
The Florida governor pointed to detransitioners who underwent these procedures as minors and say they now regret their decision after no longer identifying as transgender. Decades of research show that anywhere from 65 to 94% of transgender kids have grown out of identifying as trans by the time they reach adulthood, according to KFF Health News. (RELATED: Gov. DeSantis Launches Government-Wide Effort To Ban Child Sex Changes)
“We had Chloe Cole, we had other people who went through this when they were minors, now they’re older and it’s the biggest regret of their life,” DeSantis continued. “They feel like that they were manipulated, I understand there are some physicians who are very ideological about it, but the fact is, people go through a lot when they’re teenagers. You grow out of it most of the time in these situations. Eighty, 90% resolves by the time you get there.”
“All we’re doing is doing what’s right. The idea that this would’ve been something that would’ve even been controversial even like 10 years ago, would not have been something that anyone would’ve said anything about. And I just think, when you’re talking about this stuff, talk about ‘What did the legislature do?’ The legislature prohibited doing things like double mastectomies, they prohibited doing things with male private parts that are very graphic.”
The governor has doubled down on prohibiting the procedure after President Joe Biden called bans on performing reassignment surgeries and puberty blockers on children “close to sinful.”
““It is not ‘sinful’ to prohibit the mutilation of minors,” DeSantis said. “It is not acceptable for the federal government to mandate that procedures like sex change operations be allowed for kids.”
U.S. states such as Indiana, Alabama and Iowa all banned sex change treatments for minors. Foreign countries including the U.K, Finland and Norway agree there likely are not any benefits of puberty blockers and hormone procedures, leading England’s National Health Service (NHS) to ban puberty blockers for minors.