Florida bars docs from treating minors for gender reassignment

MIAMI: Florida’s medical boards on Friday voted for a rule that will ban doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment or surgeries to patients under the age of 18, media reports said. The measure, which will take effect after a three-week period for public comment, will prevent doctors in the southern state from performing sex-reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribing them drugs, including puberty blockers, as part of a course of gender transition.
The decision by Florida’s boards of medicine and osteopathic medicine will not apply to patients who havealready started one of those treatments. The board of medicine’s 14 members were appointed by Republican state Governor Ron DeSantis, who in March signed a law prohibiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school classrooms. Equality Florida criticized the move to ban treatment as putting transgender youth at risk. “With young lives on the line, another state agency has placed the political ambitions of Ron DeSantis over its duty to protect Floridians,” Nikole Parker, the group’s director of transgender equality, said in a statement. “These rules, as written, put transgender youth at higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidality. ”
DeSantis, a darling of right-wing Republicans who is seeking re-election and has presidential ambitions, has spent months criticizing gender transition treatments for adolescents.