Medical facilities affiliated with the University of Oklahoma will discontinue “certain gender medicine services,” officials said Tuesday after state lawmakers threatened to block as much as $108.5 million in federal funds to the University Hospitals Authority and Hospitals Trust.
The American Rescue Plan Act allocations include $20 million for a cancer treatment center in northeastern Oklahoma and $39.4 million for a children’s behavioral health hospital in Oklahoma City. The appropriations are part of House Bill 1007xx, one of several dozen bills on the agenda for a special session of the Legislature that begins Wednesday.
Language in the first section of the bill appropriates the $39.4 million to the University Hospitals Authority “to expand the capacity of behavioral health care for the children of this state,” but only on the condition that no facility owned by the authority or its associated trust perform “gender reassignment medical treatment” for children under 18.
People are also reading…
“ARPA provides a major opportunity for our state to invest and partner in projects which will have significant health benefits for Oklahomans,” says a statement issued Tuesday afternoon by OU Health. “The funding will modernize our technical infrastructure, bring National Cancer Institute-level cancer care to northeast Oklahoma and allow us to deliver the most advanced inpatient and outpatient resources in the country for young people who need mental and behavioral health care.
“The Legislature restricted the use of the funds from benefiting facilities performing certain gender medicine services. The new mental and behavioral health facility was never intended to provide such care. The OU Health Senior Leadership team is proactively planning the ceasing of certain gender medicine services across our facilities and that plan is already under development.”
Exactly what relevant services OU Health has been providing and what it will discontinue is unclear.
Barring a floor amendment, procedure calls for a single up-or-down vote on HB 1007xx, which also includes ARPA funding for an expansion of OU’s Stevenson Cancer Center into northeastern Oklahoma, $44 million for an electronic records system and $5.2 million for five mobile dental clinics.
The past two legislative sessions witnessed a marked concern among some legislators with transgender people, and in particular transgender children. State Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, said this week that he expects legislation during the 2023 regular session to ban gender-reassignment procedures for children altogether.
Permanent reassignment for children and teens is not generally recommended by the medical professions, according to the literature on the matter. However, treatment with drugs that suppress the body’s release of sex hormones, including testosterone and estrogen, during puberty is a medically accepted practice, according to the Mayo Clinic.
West and Rep. Randy Randleman, R-Eufaula, said the language in HB 1007 is necessary to protect children, while the ACLU of Oklahoma and Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said it will harm youngsters.
“Funding for childhood mental and behavioral health issues is a critical need not only in Oklahoma, but across the country,” said Randleman, a psychologist.
“At the same time, some of the ways these issues are being addressed do more harm than good for the child in the long run. Unproven, controversial, unchangeable hormonal procedures, including gender reassignment, at a young age can do irreparable physical, mental and emotional damage to a child.”
Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, said: “We are disappointed to hear the Oklahoma Legislature will threaten best practice medical care for transgender young people by creating restrictions on ARPA disbursements to OU Health.
“It proves yet again that politicians in the Oklahoma Legislature are more concerned with their election mailer taglines than they are with the health of Oklahomans.”
HB 1007xx defines the barred procedures as “any health care to facilitate the transitioning of a patient’s assigned gender identity on the patient’s birth certificate, to the gender identity experienced and defined by the patient.”
The bill says that includes “interventions” to suppress the development of secondary sex characteristics and “align the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity,” as well as medical therapies and interventions to treat gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is defined as psychological distress arising from incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.
Not included in the ban, according to the bill, are behavioral health care services or mental health counseling, medications to treat depression and anxiety, and services provided to individuals born with “ambiguous genitalia, incomplete genitalia, both male and female anatomy, biochemically verifiable disorder of sex development … and ovotesticular disorder.”
Disorder of sex development, also known as different sex development, is a condition in which a child’s chromosomes do not match their genitalia. Children with ovotesticular disorder are born with both ovaries and testes.
Featured video: Will Oklahoma transgender legislation impact NCAA postseason events?
March 24, 2022 video. Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, would prohibit a person who is born biologically male from participating in female sports as a transgendered individual. Video courtesy/Sooner Sports TV
Gallery: The journey of Senate Bill 2, now law, on transgender athletes in Oklahoma
Gov. Kevin Stitt
“This bill is the Save Women’s Sports Act. To us in Oklahoma, it is just common sense," Gov. Kevin Stitt said while signing Senate Bill 2, surrounded by female athletes and lawmakers.
“The reality is, men are biologically different than women,” he said. “Men have more muscle mass. Their bones are larger and denser. They have larger lungs and wider airways. These are physical advantages men have over women on the field, in the pool, on the track, on the course, in the weight room. ...
“People can pursue their life how they see fit, but that doesn’t give them the right to compete in women’s sports."
Read the story by Barbara Hoberock.
Senate discussion on bill regarding sports for transgender youths
Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane
Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, said last session that “people who don’t know who they are” have “mental health issues" in response to discussion about Senate Bill 2, banning transgender athletes from women's sports. Mental health professions do not consider gender nonconformity an illness, but say dealing with it can cause severe emotional and psychological stress.
Read the April 2021 story by Randy Krehbiel.
Rep. Sheila Dills, R-Tulsa
Senate Bill 2 got one of its more unique amendments from Rep. Sheila Dills, R-Tulsa. It requires parents to sign annual affidavits attesting to the sex at birth of their children and to notify appropriate authorities within 30 days of a change. Parents would have to notify authorities if their child begins hormone treatment or other procedures that would change their appearance.
Ray Hoyt, president of Tulsa Regional Tourism
The Women’s College World Series is held annually in Oklahoma City, and the 2023 NCAA wrestling championships are scheduled for Tulsa’s BOK Center. Ray Hoyt, president of Tulsa Regional Tourism, said he expects that as many as 12 scheduled events by several organizations, including the wrestling tournament, will go elsewhere if SB 2 becomes law.
He put the projected economic impact of just those events at $28 million.
“While (SB 2) is focused on sports,” Hoyt told Tulsa World in 2021, “it would set the tone for Oklahoma doing business across many other industries outside of sports. All our efforts to grow our film and music industries would also pull back their commitments to work in our state if this bill is passed.”
Click here to read the 2021 story by Randy Krehbiel.
Will Oklahoma transgender legislation impact NCAA postseason events? OU softball coach Patty Gasso's response
Oklahomans for Equality Executive Director Toby Jenkins
Oklahomans for Equality Executive Director Toby Jenkins said SB 2 will ignite witch hunts: people questioning an athlete’s gender who are jealous of that person’s performance.
“The assertation that a transgender child would be given a certain advantage because of genetics or biological assignment is not realistic,” Jenkins said.
Rep. Mauree Turner
Rep. Mauree Turner was the lone "no" vote on Senate Bill 2 when it was still in committee last year. The Legislature’s only nonbinary member, Turner argued with the premise that allowing trans girls to compete against girls assigned female at birth is "discriminating against female-bodied athletes.”
“That’s not what’s happening,” Turner said.
Read the April 2021 story by Randy Krehbiel.
Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville
Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, carried Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, on the floor.
“Male and female is a biological reality,” Daniels said. “Men have physical advantages over women. This is not something I need to explain. It is something known to everyone.”
“If you know before you dive in that pool or begin that race that you are the best woman you are going to be but you are going to be beat by a male, women’s sports will wither on the vine and there will be no more,” Daniels said. “I am not going to let that happen.”
Guerin Emig discusses Lia Thomas
Read the SB 2 column by Guerin Emig, Tulsa World:
Last April as this so-called “Save Women’s Sports Act” was first making its way through our state Legislature, the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association sent me their policy on “transgender athletes participating in athletic activities.”
The policy delved into testosterone consumption and hormone therapy. It considered timelines for those transitioning from male to female or female to male. It included documentation requirements. Pretty thorough.
The policy was enacted in 2015. An OSSAA spokesperson emailed me: “We haven’t had to enforce it yet.”
I checked around the Tulsa metro with various high school athletic directors. None were aware of any trans athletes in their districts.
Pictured: Pennsylvania's Lia Thomas competes at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships earlier this month in Atlanta. Emig asks: Are we threatening human dignity and our supposedly innate capacity for grace for the sake of one swimmer who won a 500-yard race?
