Christian public policy organizations have derided Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision to veto legislation that would have banned sex change surgeries and hormonal interventions for minors struggling with gender dysphoria and barred biological males from female sporting events.Â
DeWine announced the veto during an end-of-year media briefing on Thursday, where he said he could not support Substitute House Bill (HB68), which includes the Save Women’s Sports Act and the SAFE (Saving Adolescents From Experimentation) Act.
“Ultimately, these tough, tough decisions should not be made by the government. They should not be made by the state of Ohio,” said DeWine. “They should be made by the people who love these kids the most, and that’s the parents.”Â
“The parents who have raised that child, the parents who have seen that child go through agony, the parents who worry about that child every single day of their life.”
DeWine said he would move ahead with plans to administratively ban transgender surgeries for children under 18 and push for stricter regulations and tracking for such interventions for both minors and adults.Â
While the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign and other progressive rights groups praised DeWine’s veto, Christian conservative groups like the Center for Christian Virtue called the veto a “heartless act.”
Critics hope the Ohio General Assembly, controlled by a Republican supermajority, can override the governor’s veto with a three-fifths majority vote.
“Mike DeWine has failed Ohio, and it’s our children who are going to pay the price,” said Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer in a statement. “If the General Assembly does not override his veto, when we look back a generation from now at the thousands of kids who have been sterilized and harmed by dangerous and experimental transgender medical procedures, we will realize that those in power did nothing to stop it.”
“The only people celebrating this veto today are progressive activists who recklessly proclaim children can be ‘born in the wrong bodies’ and the children’s hospitals that are profiting off the sterilization and manipulation of children and parents.”
Baer said the proposals DeWine set forth along with the veto “are hollow” because, in addition to allowing such interventions for children to continue, they are also “mere executive orders that can be immediately repealed by the next Governor.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit that has represented female athletes in legal cases against policies allowing biological males to compete in female sports, said DeWine “betrayed” voters with his veto of HB68.
“By vetoing the bill, Gov. DeWine ignored the growing body of evidence about the damage that these drugs and surgeries inflict on children’s minds and bodies,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Sharp in a statement. “And he dismissed the harm to women athletes who are losing spots on the podium and having their athletic opportunities stripped away by policies that allow men to compete on women’s teams.”
Terry Schilling, president of the conservative activist group American Principles Project, accused DeWine of giving “into cowardice” and caving “to the transgender industry that is preying on so many vulnerable individuals.”
In a statement, Kelley Robinson, president of the national pro-LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign, stated that DeWine made “the right decision for young trans Ohioans.”
“Ohio families don’t want politicians meddling in decisions that should be between parents, their kids and their doctors,” Robinson said. “Instead, parents, schools and doctors should all do everything they can to make all youth, including transgender youth, feel loved and accepted, and politicians should not be making it harder for them to do so.”
In November, voters in Ohio passed a measure giving state constitutional protections to abortion rights in what some analysts believe is part of a national backlash in some blue and purple states to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022.Â
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