For the third time in as many years, Kansas’ Democrat Governor Larua Kelly has vetoed a bill that would penalize doctors and health care facilities that engage in sexually “transing’ minors with genital mutilation surgeries and chemicals designed to thwart their natural hormones.
Republicans in the Kansas Legislature say the override effort began literally minutes after Kelly’s late Tuesday afternoon veto announcement, although an encroaching snowstorm may delay the rubber hitting the road on the override until next week.
“Today, Gov. Kelly vetoed the Help Not Harm Act,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins posted on “X” moments after the veto. “She has officially chosen partisan politics over all logic and reason to protect our Kansas kids. They are not equipped to be making these life-altering decisions through harmful and irreversible surgeries and medicines.”
Kelly vetoed similar bills in 2023 and 2024 when Republican defectors cost them override margins. Last November’s elections saw the Kansas Senate hold its supermajority and add two additional seats, while the House maintained its existing complement and flipped three Democrat districts to red, one in Hutchinson and two in Olathe. Statehouse watchers say the gains bode well for an override. The governor’s office did not respond to the Kansas Informer’s followup question after the veto announcement.
“Infringing on parental rights is not appropriate, nor is it a Kansas value,” Kelly said in her veto announcement of SB63. “As I’ve said before, it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind. This legislation will also drive families, businesses and health care workers out of our state, stifling our economy and exacerbating our workforce shortage issue.”
Senate President Ty Masterson said the veto cued the inevitable.
“Governor Kelly’s devotion to extreme left-wing ideology knows no bounds, vetoing a bipartisan bill that prevents the mutilation of minors,” Masterson said. “The Senate standxs firmly on the side of protecting Kansas children and will swiftly override her veto before the ink from her pen is dry.”
Kelly’s veto contradicts a cultural shift in recent years away from condoning the influencing of children in pro-transgender directions, after backlash to incidents of “Drag Queen Story Hours,” for youngsters and men actively competing against women in high school and college, and Olympic athletics – sometimes with injurious results. President Donald Trump, riding a wave of anti-woke sentiment, quickly declared the official U.S. policy that there are two genders, and by executive order decreed the end of biological men competing in women’s sports.
The number of minors and young adults “identifying” as transgender has seen a marked increase in recent years, following the advent of social media and its various impacts on young people. That media presence led to theories that social contagion may be heavily responsible for the rise in the condition among teens and young adults.
A New York Post article from March 2023 notes a UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute study of Centers For Disease Control and Prevention data showing while the percentage of adults who identify as transgender has remained steady at 0.6% since its last report in 2017, some 1.4% of 13-to 17-year-olds and 1.3% of 18-to 24-year-olds identify as transgender. Five years ago, both of those numbers stood at 0.7%. Together, the two groups are estimated to account for nearly 700,000 people.
A report from Grand View Research highlighted in a 2022 Daily Wire investigation on the finances of hospitals providing gender change services showed some $1.9 billion in those activities in 2021, with an annual growth rate forecast of more than 11% through 2030. The report cited the rising incidents of gender dysphoria and an increasing number of people opting for gender change surgeries to boost those revenues through the forecast period.
Presently 23 states have banned such surgeries and drug therapies.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
