Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio became only the second Republican to ever veto a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. He made his decision after traveling to children's hospitals and talking to families that would be affected by the bill.
DeWine vetoed the bill, Sub. H.B. No. 68, Friday morning. Not only would the bill ban transgender athletes from competing on teams matching their gender expression, the AP reports, it also would stop trans kids from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy or gender-alignment surgeries—even though the last of these is extremely rare in minors.
DeWine told the AP last week that he had just been to three children's hospitals in the state to learn more about the realities of trans health care for minors. He also spoke to families with trans youth, according to NBC News.
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“We’re dealing with children who are going through a challenging time, families that are going through a challenging time,” DeWine told the AP. “I want, the best I can, to get it right.”
After vetoing the bill, he said that decisions about gender-affirming care "should not be made by the government," but families and doctors, NBC News reported.
"This bill would impact a very small number of Ohio's children," DeWine said Friday, according to Axios. "But for those children who face gender dysphoria and for their families, the consequences of this bill could not be more profound."
Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas is the only other Republican governor to veto a similar bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. Hutchinson, who is also running for the presidential nomination for his party, vetoed the bill in April 2021, telling NPR he thought it was "too extreme."
"It was too broad, and it did not grandfather in those young people who are currently under hormone treatment. And so this really puts a very vulnerable population in a more difficult position. It sends the wrong signal to them," Hutchinson told the radio network at the time.
"But also in my veto, I wanted to say to my Republican friends and colleagues that we've got to rethink our engagement in every aspect of the cultural wars," he added. "The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue."
Unfortunately, Hutchinson's veto was overridden by the Arkansas legislature. A similar fate may await DeWine's veto. Ohio's legislature has a Republican supermajority, and only one Republican, Senator Nathan Manning of Northeast Ohio, voted against the bill when it was initially passed, according to the AP. State senators need a three-fifths majority to overturn the veto.
