Proposal banning sex reassignment surgeries for children clears House committee

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FLV) – A bill that will prohibit “gender clinical interventions” on minors, such as sex reassignment surgeries, passed through the Healthcare Regulation Subcommittee Wednesday.

“Gender clinical interventions” are procedures or therapies that alter internal or external physical traits.

Those include therapies such as sex reassignment surgeries and puberty blockers.

The bill will ban the surgery or drugs that are used for the purpose of mutilation and castration for children under the age of 18.

The bill, which passed 12-5 out of its first committee, is co-sponsored by Rep. Randy Fine, R-Brevard, and Rep. Ralph Massullo, R-Lecanto. A related bill was filed in the Senate by Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, and passed its first committee March 13.

Fine said doctors who engage in the practice of performing these surgeries on minors will be committing a third degree felony in the state of Florida.

In relation to custody hearings, Fine said, “children who are at risk of being taken to do this sort of clinical gender intervention – a court can consider that in order to keep those children with the parent that does not seek to do that to their child.”

The bill prohibits the use of funds by a government entity for gender clinical interventions and prohibits insurance companies from providing coverage for such treatments.

“Should you wish to do it as an adult, you will be paying for it yourself,” Fine explained.

It will also prohibits a person’s biological sex from being changed on their birth certificate.

Upon request, the department may change the sex on a birth certificate of person born with external biological sex characteristics that were unresolvably ambiguous at the time of birth.

The bill extends the statute of limitations for claims by minors to 30 years and removes such claims from the requirements for a medical malpractice claim.

For adults, a physician must obtain informed written consent from the patient each time the physician provides gender clinical interventions for an adult, according to the bill text.

During public comment, Equality Florida Senior Political Director Joe Saunders spoke in opposition of the bill.

“This legislation is the most extreme attack on transgender Americans that is filed in a legislature today […] This is sweeping, it is extreme. And we need adults in the room to say enough is enough,” Saunders said.

Aaron DiPietro, legislative director at the Florida Family Policy Council, spoke in support of the bill.

“We should not be teaching children who are struggling with their identity to despise and hate their own bodies, and feel that the only way to be able to love themselves is to do harm to their own physical bodies,” DiPietro said.

DiPietro said he believes the pharmaceutical industry is “pushing these harmful experimental treatments on children to line their own pockets.”

Rep. Robin Barleman, D-Weston, opposed the bill in debate.

“This bill is denying health insurance coverage that is currently in place for these individuals. So, now you’re taking away an option for someone, and so I do not agree with that at all,” Barleman said.

“Mark my words, there’ll be more to come, and you’re vilifying one group of individuals – they already have the highest suicide rates,” Barleman stated.

Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, supported the bill and thanked the bill’s sponsors for their “courage” and for “offering a simple common sense and very forward-looking piece of legislation for recognizing an essential truth.”

“These children are actually victims, once called ‘patients,’ because we allowed ideology to masquerade as ‘medicine.’ Thank you for putting a stop to it,” Black said.

In closing, Massullo said the treatments “do much more harm than good.”

“For us to continue those would be disgraceful, as a state. And, as a person in the medical profession, I would not be able to live with myself and allow those to continue to occur,” Massullo said.

The bill now heads to the House Health & Human Services Committee.