Kansas Republicans failed Monday night to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill that would ban surgeries for transgender children.
Just hours after the Senate voted 27-13 to override the veto, the state House’s Republican supermajority secured the reversal by two votes. The final vote was 82-43, with two Republicans voting against it.
“It’s very disappointing,” state Sen. Mike Thompson told Fox News Digital Tuesday morning. “We have tried three times to introduce legislation to protect children from making decisions that would permanently change their lives.”
“We do not know what was going through the minds of the two members who capitulated yesterday, as the House of Commons has been a trusted partner on this issue in the past, but unfortunately this is yet another time for us. “It was a terrible shock,” he said.
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Kansas Governor Laura Kelly recently vetoed a bill that would ban transgender surgeries on children. (Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)
“A bipartisan group of members of Congress are adamant that a divisive bill like House Alternative 233 has no place in Kansas,” Kelly, who vetoed the bill earlier this month, said in a statement Monday. I’m glad that he is making this point.”
“The Legislature’s decision to uphold my veto is a victory for parental rights, Kansas families, and the families who want to call our state home,” she said.
The ban would have prevented state officials from encouraging “social transitions,” such as using pronouns or choosing clothing that aligns with a person’s preferred identity.
A replacement bill for Senate Bill 233 would outlaw transgender treatment for minors and create a cause of action for transgender people. medical provider The person who provided such treatment. The bill would also limit the use of state funds for transgender treatment.
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Transgender youth are protesting. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
Kansas Senate Health Committee Chair Beverly Gossage told her colleagues during Monday’s vote, “We are on the right side of history on this.”
Republican state Rep. John Eppley said the “language in the bill” that would block this would “encourage state organizations and state employees to promote the use of different pronouns or, in effect, seek gender reassignment. It is an effort to ban “this.”
State Republican Sen. Mark Steffen said the bill aims to trample on “woke” health care providers who perform such procedures on “disoriented” children.
“Just as you would never tell someone with anorexia that they are fat, you would never tell a boy that he is a girl, or that he is a girl, or that he is a boy,” he says. .
Democrats, on the other hand, denounced the Senate’s invalid votes. Democratic state Sen. Mary Ware said the bill “tramples” on “the right of some Kansans to live peacefully and lawfully and to make free decisions about their own bodies.”
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Kansas Republicans voted to override the governor’s veto. (Tom Bridge/Independent Recording via AP, File)
When the governor vetoed the bill, she said in a statement that the “divisive” bill “imposes government mandates on Kansan people and deprives parents of how to best raise and care for their children.” “By giving orders, they are targeting a small number of Kansan people.”
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“I don’t think that’s a conservative value, and certainly not a Kansas value,” she said.
The bill comes as more than a dozen U.S. states have enacted similar laws banning surgical procedures and prescribing hormones to transgender youth. Idaho, North Dakota, Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama have passed laws making it a felony to change the sex of a child.
