Arkansas AG Vows Appeal after Judge Strikes Down Ban on Transgender Mutilation of Children
Ashley Sadler : Jun 23, 2023
LifeSiteNews.com
"I will continue fighting as long as it takes to stop providers from sterilizing children." -Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin, in response to an Obama-appointed judge's decision to block the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act.
(Little Rock, AR) — [LifeSiteNews.com] A federal judge on Tuesday permanently struck down an Arkansas law banning destructive transgender surgeries and drugs for children and teens. The state's Republican attorney general has vowed to appeal the ruling. (Image: LifeSiteNews Screengrab /Capitol View/Roby Brock/YouTube)
US District Judge Jay Moody, an Obama-appointee, handed down the decision in an 80-page ruling permanently blocking enforcement of Arkansas' Act 626, also known as the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. Moody had previously issued a temporary injunction against the measure shortly after the state legislature passed it in 2021, overriding the veto of liberal Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The first such law in the nation (19 others have followed it in the intervening years), the SAFE Act would make it illegal for doctors to prescribe dangerous puberty-blockers, sterilizing cross-sex hormones, or mutilating transgender surgeries for young people under the age of 18. The law would also ban doctors from referring patients to other clinics to receive the procedures.
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In his Tuesday ruling, Moody argued that the measure violated the constitutional due process and equal protection rights of children who are confused about their sex and their families and cut against the First Amendment rights of the doctors who carry out the mutilations. He also claimed that evidence supports the chemical and surgical transgender disfigurement of young people.
Moody wrote that the type of so-called "care" prohibited under the SAFE Act "improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing."
However, as LifeSiteNews has noted, in addition to the fact that so-called "affirmation" asserts a false reality that one's sex can be changed, long-term studies do not support the claim that destructive "gender-affirming" drugs and surgeries benefit the mental health of their recipients, something advocates frequently allege without evidence. Moreover, research indicates that some 80 percent of children suffering from gender dysphoria will naturally outgrow it by late adolescence.
Moreover, the UK and a number of European nations have urged caution in pursuing irreversible gender procedures for children. Official bodies in Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have all tapped the brakes on the total promotion of "gender affirmation" for minors in recent years... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here
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