DES MOINES, Iowa (OSV News) -- Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed two bills into law March 22 that impact minors who identify as transgender, with one of the bills banning some surgeries or hormonal interventions for those minors.
The other bill requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their biological sex rather than their self-perceived gender identities.
The new laws are part of a broader effort to pass such bills across the country. Other states, Mississippi, Utah, South Dakota and Tennessee, also have moved to restrict surgical and hormonal interventions this year. Legislators in Nebraska recently advanced a comparable effort.
Supporters of prohibitions on medical interventions for minors who identify as transgender say such efforts will prevent them from making irreversible decisions as children they may later come to regret. Critics, including Catholic leaders, argue that preventing such efforts could cause other harm to minors such as mental health issues.
More than 400 "anti-LGBTQ bills" have been filed in state legislatures in the 2023 legislative session, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes bills restricting surgical and hormonal interventions for transgender individuals.
The Human Rights Campaign, a LGBTQ political advocacy group, criticized the bill restricting intervention, calling it discriminatory. Cathryn Oakley, HRC’s state legislative director and senior counsel, said in a March 22 statement that the legislation is "a dangerous attack on transgender youth in Iowa."
"Banning gender-affirming care not only goes against the medical consensus of every major health organization but jeopardizes the health and wellbeing of young transgender Iowans," Oakley said, arguing that law "exacerbates the challenges" youth who identify as transgender face.
Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, praised Reynolds in a statement calling "the transgender movement" a "predatory industry exploiting our society’s most vulnerable kids."
"As more and more horror stories have emerged from children who were encouraged to undergo these dangerous, irreversible procedures, only to regret them later on, it's become clear that strong action must be taken to shut down this medical experimentation," Schilling said. "This egregious malpractice can no longer be allowed to continue."
In guidance on health care policy and practices released March 20, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine opposed "interventions which involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof."
"In the case of children, the exchange of sex characteristics is prepared by the administration of chemical puberty blockers, which arrest the natural course of puberty and prevent the development of some sex characteristics in the first place," the document said. "These technological interventions are not morally justified either as attempts to repair a defect in the body or as attempts to sacrifice a part of the body for the sake of the whole. First, they do not repair a defect in the body: There is no disorder in the body that needs to be addressed; the bodily organs are normal and healthy. Second, the interventions do not sacrifice one part of the body for the good of the whole."
Earlier this year, the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, released guidance and policies on ministering to people experiencing gender dysphoria that calls for compassion and coherence with the church's teaching on gender and identity. The document, "Gender Identity Guide and Policies," released Jan. 16, begins by establishing the church's stance on the inseparability of gender from biological sex while emphasizing pastoral concern for children and adults experiencing an incongruence between their sex and gender.
A statement provided at the time to OSV News by Anne Marie Cox, the diocese's communications director, said Bishop William M. Joensen organized a task force to examine the issue, and "after two years of study, prayer, listening and consultation, a policy was developed that begins with love."
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