{"id":28503,"date":"2023-04-29T19:23:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T19:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/montana-governor-signs-bill\/"},"modified":"2023-04-29T19:25:53","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T19:25:53","slug":"montana-governor-signs-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/montana-governor-signs-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana governor signs bill banning transgender medical care for youths"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Reuters) – Montana’s governor on Friday enacted a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender children, days after a transgender lawmaker protesting the bill was barred from the floor of the state legislature, sparking a national furor.<\/p>\n

The Republican House majority voted to censure Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat, on Wednesday, excluding her from the House chamber for the rest of the legislative session for saying on April 18 that lawmakers backing the bill would have blood on their hands.<\/p>\n

The legislation, Senate Bill 99, passed the House of Representatives three days later, and Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signed it into law on Friday.<\/p>\n

Republican politicians have pressed a campaign to restrict special medical treatments prescribed for transgender youth, including hormone treatments and puberty blockers, with dozens of similar bills introduced in legislatures across the U.S.<\/p>\n

Opponents of transgender healthcare interventions say their long-term effects are not fully understood and that children and teenagers are too young to make such life-altering choices, even with parental supervision.<\/p>\n

Zephyr, a first-term representative from Missoula, declared that denying gender-affirming care to youngsters who feel at odds with their birth sex was “tantamount to torture” and that a ban would lead to more suicides.<\/p>\n

Republican House leaders initially reacted to Zephyr’s floor statements by turning off her microphone. The level of acrimony escalated on Monday of this week when Zephyr led a protest by her supporters chanting “Let her speak!” from the visitors gallery, ending in the arrest of seven demonstrators.<\/p>\n

The party-line 68-32 vote to formally exclude Zephyr from the House floor, gallery and anteroom on Wednesday prompted LGBTQ activists to call on supporters to join in a 24-hour protest event in Missoula for Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday called the Montana Republican House action against Zephyr a “denial of democratic values”.<\/p>\n

The censure has also drawn comparison to the Republican expulsion of two Black state representatives in Tennessee who were kicked out three weeks ago for leading a gun control protest on the House floor. The Tennessee lawmakers were promptly reappointed to their seats by their county legislatures and earned a trip to the White House.<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sonali Paul)<\/p>\n

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(Reuters) – Montana’s governor on Friday enacted a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender children, days after a transgender lawmaker protesting the bill was barred from the floor of the state legislature, sparking a national furor. The Republican House majority voted to censure Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat, on Wednesday, excluding her from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1214],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-28503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-domestic","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportDomesticNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3S00R-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28505,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28503\/revisions\/28505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}