Opinion: Ohio’s “SAFE” Isn’t Safe
Ohio's SAFE Act ensures anything but safety for the young queer and transgender populations.
Ohio’s “SAFE” Act does not call for safety; the act undoubtedly poses risks and threats to numerous groups of young people in the state.
Ohio's House Bill 68 (HB68), otherwise known as Ohio’s SAFE Act, primarily sponsored by Gary Click, passed and went into effect on April 24, 2024.
The act’s “SAFE” acronym title represents the slogan “saving adolescents from experimentation.” However, using the word “expression” might have been a better fit.
The finalized bill is a hindrance to the rights of transgender and gender-diverse individuals, including the removal of their medical autonomy.
The SAFE Act prohibits medical and mental health professionals—including physicians, doctors, therapists, and psychologists—from performing or aiding in any gender-affirming care for transitioning transgender adolescents.
Gender affirmation, as defined by TransHub, a transgender information organization, can include a variety of different concepts, but most of the time, it refers to “the personal process or processes a trans or gender diverse person determines is right for them in order to live…gender affirmation may involve social, medical and/or legal steps that affirm a person’s gender.”
Many times, seeking gender affirmation means that those individuals will acquire legal name changes, surgeries, prescription hormone blockers, or hormone replacement therapy. Now, many of these practices are banned in Ohio.
Transgender minors will not be able to begin treatments after the enrolled date, and people who are already taking the treatments may lack continued access, which can cause withdrawal symptoms similar to that of menopause, according to Medical News Today.
Additionally, supportive physicians, even with a consenting parent, cannot legally send a patient to an out-of-state provider to receive proper care without being deemed “unprofessional” and facing the consequences, undefined by the law, from the state medical board.
Mental health professionals are also barred from aiding in gender-affirming care for their patients without facing similar consequences. They face another restriction: providers are required to screen transgender patients for “comorbidities, abuse, and traumas” before continuing to treat them and their “gender-related condition.”
Being transgender is not a trauma response, nor is it a choice or a mental condition. Labeling transgender individuals this way—in addition to referring to the conceptual idea of gender identity or non-conformity as a mental disorder—is not only extremely unprofessional but genuinely false.
Every person has a right to live as their own person in their own body.
The bill vastly describes the aspects of gender-affirming care, including the surgeries it may involve. These surgeries can sometimes be breast implants and reductions, liposuction, and other facial alteration procedures. Some transgender individuals may also receive procedures that are similar to those used in emergency medical services.
Some of these treatments, however, appeal to cisgender people—those who are comfortable identifying with their sex assigned at birth—as well.
Cisgender individuals have the right to permanently alter their bodies, sometimes even as minors. The United States does not have specific rules regarding age and plastic surgery, but Ohio requires parental consent if an individual is under the age of 18.
Even with age restrictions in some states, The American Society of Plastic Surgeons still reports that there were at least 267,779 cosmetic surgeries performed on minors in 2022 alone. And yet, transgender youth continue to lose access to their gender-affirming health care, which can consist of similar treatments.
At least 22 states have posed restrictions on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. Why can these bans and restrictions still stand if states are not posing the same restrictions on plastic and cosmetic procedures for cisgender people? The given reasons may not be convincing enough.
One of the main reasons the lawmakers pose is the potential risk of complications during the surgery. Yes, these procedures can carry risks, but that is widely known to be true for any and all surgeries.
Additionally, the possibility of regret has been a concern. Most transgender people spend years waiting for their procedures and do not regret their transition. At least 65% of people who receive plastic surgery have regrets, while only 1% showed regret in gender-transition surgeries, according to the Associated Press.
The bill still says that “it is of grave concern to the General Assembly that the medical community is allowing individuals who experience distress at identifying with their biological sex to be subjects of irreversible and drastic non-genital gender reassignment surgery and irreversible, permanently sterilizing genital gender reassignment surgery.”
The genitalia of a person, and whether they want to identify with it or not, should never be the concern of anyone apart from that person. Less, the genitalia of a person should never be one of the “gravest” concerns of an assembly that appears to be extremely disconnected from an entire community of voters.
Some lawmakers do not support the queer and transgender communities. Some may not agree with the idea of a gender transition, others view it as a personal attack.
Having an opinion is completely fine; it is a human right—but so is bodily autonomy.
Never assume universal hatred.
There are so many provisions in this bill that inhibit treatments for individuals who do not obtain parental consent, but there are no protections for transgender children who do have supportive parents.
When making legislation, the framers should not have assumed that every transgender child has unsupportive parents who feel as if their rights are hindered due to the availability of gender-affirming care.
While some transgender children do face the struggle of unsupportive parents, there are also plenty who experience the exact opposite.
One of the main arguments for this bill is to give parents more agency in their child’s upbringing. But what about the parents who want to use their agency to allow their children to transition and be comfortable in their own bodies?
Assuming parents are not supportive of their children or that all parents feel threatened by access to gender-affirming care has taken away the ability of supportive parents to make their own efforts.
As a result, giving non-accepting parents the full agency they feel they deserve takes away the agency that supportive parents need.
Inequity and inaccessibility lead to erasure.
As a society, we have already seen plenty of erasure within the LGBTQ+ community through widespread discrimination, downplay of shootings and terror, and radical movements to dispel the queer history and acceptance from the United States education system.
Additionally, the transgender community has faced its own set of attacks: sports bans, restrictions that make a name and sex changes less accessible, and many state bans on essential healthcare.
The suicide rate in the gender-queer youth community is extremely high—many transgender children never grow up to become adults because the environment and society they exist within are so restrictive.
The community has been forced to march and create movements for decades because every person has a right to exist the way they wish.
Ohio’s “SAFE” act is not safe. It does not “save” Ohio’s children. It does not protect them.
The only time we have is now. It is time to protect every single child—not from the LGBTQ+ community, but from the lawmakers who want to eliminate it.
Our lawmakers should no longer focus on making legislation that prevents our citizens from living their lives without daily discomfort—the government in the United States was built to serve its people, not to violate them.