<\/p>\n
Missouri has banned the use of tax dollars to pay for so-called gender transition procedures of trans-identified inmates, joining efforts at both the state and federal levels to restrict public funding for such interventions.\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Missouri\u2019s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed\u00a0House Bill 2009\u00a0into law Tuesday, following the bill\u2019s\u00a0passage\u00a0by the Republican-controlled Missouri Senate with no opposition. The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives advanced the legislation in a\u00a0107-39 vote, with most Republicans voting in favor and most Democrats opposed.\n<\/p>\n
The legislation, which primarily deals with funding for the Department of Corrections, contains a provision declaring, \u201cNo funds shall be expended for any cross-sex hormones, or gender transition surgery undertaken for the purpose of any gender transition.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The conservative nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom praised Kehoe for signing legislation prohibiting the use of tax dollars to fund gender transition procedures for inmates.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe applaud Gov. Kehoe for protecting Missouri taxpayers from being forced to fund harmful transition drugs and surgeries,\u201d said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Sharp in a\u00a0statement. \u201cGrowing medical evidence demonstrates that these procedures are neither safe nor effective in treating gender dysphoria. And no amount of drugs or surgeries can change a person\u2019s sex. Instead, states should prioritize counseling to help individuals address the underlying causes of their distress and find comfort with their bodies.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Kehoe\u2019s approval of House Bill 2009 comes after President Donald Trump signed an\u00a0executive order\u00a0at the beginning of his second term last year titled \u201cDefending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The executive order directs the U.S. Attorney General to ensure that \u201cno Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate\u2019s appearance to that of the opposite sex.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Last year,\u00a0Georgia\u00a0took similar action to ensure that no tax dollars were used to fund sex change procedures for inmates in state prisons. Georgia\u2019s legislation contained limited exceptions allowing public funding of transition surgeries for intersex inmates, the continuation of interventions already deemed medically necessary and the continuation of treatments for inmates already undergoing them so they could begin \u201ctransitioning off therapy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In other states, taxpayers have funded transition procedures for trans-identified inmates, either through legislation passed by state lawmakers or through court decisions.\n<\/p>\n
A\u00a02023 report\u00a0from The Washington Free Beacon found that $4 million in public funds in California have gone to such interventions since the state became the first in the country to use government funding to pay for inmates\u2019 gender transition procedures in 2017.\n<\/p>\n
In 2024, a federal judge in Indiana\u00a0ordered the Indiana Department of Corrections\u00a0to pay for the transition procedures of a trans-identified male inmate convicted of strangling his 11-month-old stepdaughter to death, concluding that failure to do so constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The state of Indiana appealed the ruling.\n<\/p>\n
More than a decade ago, a federal judge in Massachusetts reached the same conclusion, issuing an order requiring the use of public funds to pay for convicted murderer Robert Kosilek to undergo gender transition procedures. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0reversed the lower court ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Kosilek\u2019s appeal three years later.\n<\/p>\n
This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: welcomia via Canva Teams.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Missouri has banned the use of tax dollars to pay for so-called gender transition procedures of trans-identified inmates, joining efforts at both the state and federal levels to restrict public funding for such interventions. Have you taken your place on the wall? \u00a0 Missouri\u2019s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed\u00a0House Bill 2009\u00a0into law Tuesday, following the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1974,1782,10062,557,10054,1496,3128],"class_list":["post-30257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-prayer","tag-bans","tag-funding","tag-prisons","tag-state","tag-taxpayer","tag-trans","tag-treatments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}