Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Wednesday safeguarding sex change surgery for LGBTQ patients.
State agencies will protect transgender patients’ ability to access sex change medical treatment and will not help states “seeking to penalize” such procedures or arrest individuals charged with violating out-of-state laws regarding sex change treatment, Executive Order 23-03 reads. The order combats restrictions to sex change procedures being passed and debated in other states. (RELATED ‘Money And Ideology’: Plastic Surgeons Association Fought To Stop Bills Banning Child Sex Changes)
“We want every Minnesotan to grow up feeling safe, valued, protected, celebrated, and free to exist as their authentic versions of themselves,” Walz said, according to the Associated Press. “Protecting and supporting access to gender affirming health care is essential to being a welcoming and supportive state.”
The executive order is similar to legislative efforts by Minnesota lawmakers to make the state a “trans refuge,” AP reported. The bill, authored by openly transgender Democratic Rep. Leigh Finke, would “prevent out-of-state laws from interfering in the practice of gender-affirming health care in Minnesota,” according to a Feb. 21 press release.
Walz’s executive order counters efforts from several states to prohibit minors from receiving sex change treatments. Tennessee, South Dakota and Utah lawmakers approved legislation to make such treatments inaccessible to patients under 18, while similar proposals are being considered in Georgia and Oklahoma.
Walz targeted South Dakota’s law in his speech to supporters during the signing, AP reported, saying he doesn’t “know what a group of people in Pierre who decide to make life miserable and more dangerous for people are thinking, but it’s not going to happen in Minnesota.”
Walz and Finke did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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