Some news came Friday that gave an unexpected jolt of hope. Much of the year saw an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary people, and several have barred transgender and nonbinary people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
So it was great to hear tha Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, vetoed a bill that would have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender.
The Ohio Legislature also has a supermajority of Republicans and may decide to override DeWine’s veto.
This prevented Ohio for saying that the state government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the parents.
DeWine was speaking as a mainstream, Midwestern Republican and who believes the government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as humanly possible.
This last belief, in individual freedom and individual responsibility, was the bedrock of their politics.
I am not surprised that defeats keep coming for anti-transgender activists. At the ballot box, hard-right candidates in swing states have tried to persuade voters with lurid messaging about children being subjected to grisly surgeries and pumped full of unnecessary medications. But in race after race, the tactic has failed.
This week a federal judge in Idaho issued a preliminary ruling that a ban on transgender care for minors could not be enforced because it violated the children’s 14th Amendment rights and that “parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children.” The state is expected to appeal the decision.
In June, a federal court blocked an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The evidence shows that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing of protecting children and safeguarding medical ethics.
In 2021, Asa Hutchinson, then the governor, had vetoed the ban for reasons similar to DeWine, but the Arkansas Legislature overrode his veto.
In other states, like Texas and Missouri, courts have permitted bans to go into effect, forcing families to make very difficult decisions about whether to travel to receive care or move to a different state altogether.
The issue seems destined to reach the Supreme Court soon. The A.C.L.U. has asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the care ban in Tennessee on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender girl. Given how swiftly and decisively the court moved to gut abortion rights, it seems quite possible that the conservative supermajority could choose to severely restrict access to transgender health care for children or even adults.
But the overturning of Roe has deeply unsettled the country, unleashing a backlash that has delivered unexpected victories to Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. Ohio voters just chose by a wide margin to enshrine the right to end a pregnancy in the state Constitution.
Americans simply do not want the government making decisions about families’ private medical care.
Large majorities of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion is none of the government’s business.
Gender is one of the most basic building blocks of identity, and even though gender variations of many kinds have been with us for millenniums, the way these changes are being lived out feel, to some people, like a huge disruption to their way of life.
No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalized, care, as many states have done in the United States. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatments for children through their socialized health systems,
Republicans are passing draconian laws in the states where they have total control, laws that could potentially lead to parents being charged with child abuse for supporting their transgender children or threaten doctors who treat transgender children with felony convictions.
These statutes have strong echoes of laws in Russia, which is increasingly criminalizing every aspect of queer life. These extreme policies have no place in any democratic society.
2024 is an election year, and even though transphobia has proved to be a loser at the ballot box, many Republicans are sure to beat that drum anyway.
Mike DeWine has me hoping that some Republicans will remember what was once a core principle of their party: Keep the government out of my life, and let me be free to live as I choose.