Louisiana Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto on Bill Banning Transition Surgeries for Minors

On Tuesday, the Louisiana state legislature voted to override Governor John Bel Edwards’ (D-La.) veto of a bill that would ban surgeries and other procedures that attempt to “transition” minors to the opposite gender.

As reported by Breitbart, the law was sponsored by State Representative Gabe Firment (R-La.), who said that the law would forbid doctors from “prescribing hormone therapy and puberty blockers to minors, and from administering gender-transition surgical procedures.” The bill was passed in June but vetoed by Edwards.

The veto override passed in the Louisiana House of Representatives by a landslide 75-23 margin before it also passed in the State Senate. Firment pointed out that if the veto override did not pass, and such transgender operations were allowed to continue in the state, Louisiana could see an influx of minors from other states seeking the procedures that had been outlawed by Louisiana’s southern neighbors.

“If we don’t pass this bill, Louisiana will become the destination for children across the entire South to undergo these life-altering and irreversible medical experiments,” Firment explained.

Governor Edwards, whose term expires early next year, vowed to fight the law in court.

“Today, I was overridden for the second time, on my veto of a bill that needlessly harms a very small population of vulnerable children, their families, and their health care professionals,” said Edwards in a statement. “I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill, as well.”

With the veto override, Louisiana is now the 20th state in the nation to ban the practice of “transitioning” minors, a scientifically-unproven method for treating the mental illness of transgenderism, a disease in which someone falsely believes that they are somehow the opposite gender of the one that they were born as. Such patients may seek treatments that include mutilation of their own genitals and the prescription of puberty blockers and other hormone treatments, processes that are irreversible and have been widely documented as causing severe physical and mental trauma.

Louisiana, along with Mississippi and Kentucky, is one of three states that is conducting its statewide elections this year rather than in 2024. As Edwards is finishing his second term, he is term-limited out of office. Every hypothetical poll suggests that the governorship will return to Republican control, with Edwards having survived politically by reigning as a moderate, if not conservative, blue-dog Democrat. Incumbent Attorney General Jeff Landry (R-La.) is widely considered the frontrunner for both the October jungle primary and the November general election.