Oklahoma Moves to Ban ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care for Those 26 and Under

The Oklahoma legislature is moving to ban “gender-affirming” care for those under the age of 26, via a bill dubbed the “Millstone Act.”

The bill specifically states that “a physician or other healthcare professional shall not provide gender transition procedures to any individual under twenty-six (26) years of age.”

Further, it states that a physician or other healthcare professional “shall not refer any individual under twenty-six (26) years of age to any healthcare professional for gender transition procedures.”

The bill defines such procedures as both inpatient and outpatient services, as well as the use of prescribed drugs “related to gender transition that seeks to: (1) alter or remove physical or anatomical characteristics or features that are typical for the individual’s biological sex, or (2) instill or create physiological or anatomical characteristics that resemble a sex different from the individual’s biological sex, including but not limited to medical services that provide puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, or other mechanisms to promote the development of feminizing or masculinizing features in the opposite biological sex, or genital or nongenital gender reassignment surgery performed for the  purpose of assisting an individual with a gender transition.”

Notably, the bill does not apply to those who were born with what is described as a “verifiable disorder of sex development,” with a few other specific exceptions outlined as well. 

Per the measure, any physician or healthcare provider who “knowingly referred for or provided” such procedures to an individual under the age of 26 will face a felony charge. It also deems such a referral or “provision of” such procedures as “unprofessional conduct,” resulting in “immediate revocation fo the license or certificate of the physician or other healthcare professional.” State funds will also be prohibited from going toward these procedures for individuals under the age of 26.

According to the Hill, the name of the act references the warning outlined by Jesus in Matthew 18.

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea,” the scripture reads. 

The measure follows individual states taking action against the radical left’s attempts to normalize gender confusion. Florida last year, for example, prohibited Medicaid from covering transgender procedures following a report requested by the Secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), finding such treatments “experimental and investigational” and not “safe or effective.”