Rep. Click's Floor Speech on Veto Override of HB 68
Policy & Intentions
Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to stand up for the rights of children to grow up intact yet again. It has been said that there are people on both sides of this issue with the best intentions. That may be true. However, Good intentions do not save lives or protect women: good policy does. The SAFE Act is a carefully curated, thoroughly vetted policy.
Governor’s Good Initiatives
Despite a few policy differences, I want to commend the governor for adding to what we have done with his requirement to collect data and block pop-up clinics from reckless distribution of hormones. I also commend his temporary executive order banning sex change surgeries on minors. This is not a meaningless step. We have demonstrated unequivocally that surgeries ARE happening on minors. We know that there would be a rush on surgeons to complete surgeries on minors before the ninety-day period when the SAFE Act will take effect. The governor has my full support in this and I am thankful.
New Scrips
Governor DeWine, because I know that you want to save lives and prevent harm, I would encourage you to issue one more executive order to prevent new prescriptions for puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones to minors before the SAFE Act takes effect. We included a grandfather clause at your request. However, the catch is that many are now rushing to get these dangerous drug cocktails prior to the effective date of the SAFE Act so that they can be grandfathered in. We must close this loophole and end the chemical castration of our youth with these dangerous and deforming drugs. I urge you to issue an executive order as soon as possible to protect our children until such time as the SAFE Act goes into effect.
Suicide 19x
It is well-documented that the suicide rates are elevated by a factor of 19 times after transition. The trans community calls this the seven-year itch. While short-term surveys produce a false positive in the child’s improved mental health, long-term studies demonstrate no overall improvement and in-fact a decrease in mental health. This contributes to actual suicides rather than simply ideations.
Emotion/Evidence Deadname
We have a choice to follow the emotion or the evidence.
I understand the power of anecdotal stories from people who genuinely believe what they say. However, we cannot continue falling into the trap of allowing children to self-diagnose. I don’t doubt their sincerity. According to professionals as well as those who have experienced it, Gender Dysphoria is the result of suicidal ideations, not the cause and that can be very confusing for a child. Every child with Gender Dysphoria begins with comorbidities including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and sometimes physical and sexual abuse. The Dysphoria acts as an escape from reality. This is why the term deadnaming is used referring to one’s “old self”. It is an unhealthy form of escapism.
Let’s look at the evidence. Ohio’s Hospitals first began experimenting with gender medicine on our minors in 2014. But there was no epidemic of youth committing suicide due to gender dysphoria prior to that date. Anxiety and depression were treated with traditional means. Since then, Gender Dysphoria has become the fall guy for mental health distress.
Just look at the national picture. If we believe that gender-affirming care saves lives, we should have seen a decrease in youth suicides as gender clinics proliferated since the first one in Boston in 2007. But in fact, suicides increased. If bills like the SAFE Act increased suicides, you would expect to see the numbers rise since the first bill of its kind passed in Arkansas in 2021 and more than 20 states since then. But in fact, suicides have decreased by anywhere from 9-18%. Maybe that’s because they have to do the real work of psychotherapy and counseling. The evidence contradicts their emotional appeals.
Morgan
I understand why the governor is moved by looking into the eyes of folks who told him that having a sex change saved their lives. I’ve looked into eyes of folks on both sides of this issue. Did it mean anything when you looked into Chloey’s eyes, governor? I know it was just a zoom. Did you look into Prisha’s eyes or watch her heart-wrenching video? I haven’t yet been able to get an answer as to why the governor refused to meet with Morgan, a victim of Gender Affirming Care, while he welcomed others into his home. I know why the hospital association didn’t want him to meet with her, but I don’t know why he let them choose my witnesses.
When I first dropped the SAFE Act off in the clerk’s office at the beginning of 2023, Morgan was living life as a boy and on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She had been affirmed, taken testosterone for several years, and had a double mastectomy that she regretted. She is a detransitioner from Columbus and testified that she was on suicide watch for an extended period of time. She wouldn’t bathe, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t shower, she wouldn’t come out of her room. That was all within this last year. She confronted her Gender Affirming counselor who admitted to her that she didn’t really know what she was doing because this was all so new. She just thought she was supposed to affirm Morgan. That’s all that she was allowed to do under the current system. Morgan is now living as her authentic self again. I know that if you had her into your home and looked into her eyes, you would have been moved because you are a person who cares. But she never had that opportunity.
That’s why a multidisciplinary team is not sufficient. That just means more people getting paid to say the same thing because they all are mandated to follow the dangerous Gender Affirming Care model.
G.A.C.
That’s why I was disappointed to hear the Governor use the phrase “Gender Affirming Care”. Gender Affirming Care is a harmful superstitious slogan, not evidence-based science. I suppose the polls say that gender-affirming care sounds a whole lot better than giving sex-changes to children, but that’s what it is.
It is a belief that we all have an invisible gender distinct from our sex. Supposedly, some people’s gender aligns with their sex and some don’t. Doctors are blamed for recklessly ‘“assigning” sex at birth.’ God never gave us designer children with optional parts or after-market accessories.
John Money, Bruce & Brian Riemer
This concept was built on the reckless experiment of Dr. John Money who experimented on the twin boys Bruce and Brian Reimer. Bruce was converted to Brenda and raised as a girl. Dr. Money reported his experiment as a success. But in fact, Bruce and Brian both died of suicide and their mother attempted suicide. Let me say emphatically that Gender Affirming Care does not affirm gender, it affirms dysphoria. We would never apply those same principles to other body dysmorphic conditions such as anorexia and we should not do it here. Gender Identity Disorder is a dissociative disorder that should be treated rather than celebrated. It is a dangerous and devastating fantasy. We must return to evidence-based biology.
FGM, 132nd General Assembly
I would remind this body that the 132 General Assembly said in a bipartisan fashion that parents emphatically do not have the right to consent their children to female genital mutilation. However, that is exactly what happens with the deforming puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It happens to males and females. Consultation with ideologically captured physicians does not grant parents the right to harm children through irreversible surgeries OR irreversible and harmful drugs!
No parent has the constitutional right to harm their child. The same government that requires you to send your children to school, prohibits you from giving them illicit drugs, and can charge parents with neglect or abuse, also has the obligation to prevent parents from chemically castrating and sterilizing their children.
Parents’ Rights
Recently, several media outlets have published a video of one of our children’s hospitals, the actual perpetrators against parental rights. They were caught advising pediatricians on how to circumvent the parents. They have a process to convince the parents, coerce the parents or co-opt the parents by sending them to a gender therapist without disclosing it to the parents. They do anything to get to their ideologically driven end goal. Not once in that video do they suggest that maybe we ought to listen to the parents. Any parent who doesn’t agree must be reeducated. They often ask, “Do you want a living son or a dead daughter?”
Parent’s rights are at risk without the SAFE Act.
10 Days
The SAFE Act and Save Women's Sports have been carefully curated and thoroughly vetted.
The governor had ample time to participate in that process, and while I appreciate his efforts, a 10-day crash course, hosted primarily by those who profit from these procedures, is not enough.
Incredible Support
The SAFE Act was passed with a supermajority in both chambers. Every single elected statewide official and Senator Vance has shown us their support. Congressmen and Presidential Candidates have chimed in.
I want to thank my colleagues who have stood by my side, and you Mr. Speaker. We have to choose Evidence over emotions and science over slogans. I have accepted the Governor’s invitation to work on additional policies as supplements to the SAFE Act, not as a substitute. Mr. Speaker and colleagues, I urge an override of the Governor's veto of HB 68.