Georgia on Track To Be Ninth State To Outlaw Transgender Procedures for Children

“What we’re doing is preventing minors…from having irreversible changes in their lives,” Republican state senator says

The Georgia Senate introduced a bill on Tuesday prohibiting minors from receiving sex-change procedures, following the lead of eight other states. Republican lawmakers in the state have become concerned with the permanent harm these surgeries and hormone therapies can do to children. Thirty states total share these concerns. Eight of these states including Mississippi, Florida, Utah, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, South Dakota, and Tennessee have already banned such procedures, with Missouri and Kentucky waiting for governors to sign similar bills into law.

Republican state senator Ben Watson, who helped draft the measure, believes that the bill strikes a good balance, because doctors can still prescribe puberty blockers, and the bill only blocks “irreversible procedures or therapies.”

The legislation heads to Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for him to sign. A spokesman for the governor declined to comment on his position.