CA Gov. Approves Law Earmarking Taxpayer Funded Grants for Transgender Surgeries, Hormone Treatments

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved a law in the state for transgender criminals and another law that provides grants to hospitals for hormone therapy for transgender persons.

According to CBN News, under Senate Bill 132, prison inmates who identify as transgender, non-binary or intersex will be able to choose their gender identity when they are admitted to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The bill is known as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act and was introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener in hopes of reducing the possibility of violence against transgender inmates.

“SB.132 protects transgender people in prison, by allowing them to be housed where they're safest, instead of automatically being placed in the facility corresponding to their birth-assigned gender,” Wiener tweeted about the bill in early September. “Trans women are frequently brutalized in men's prisons."

Under the law, the state can refuse a request if there are “management or security concerns.”

In a second approval, Newson approved the Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund, which uses taxpayer dollars for treatments and medical procedures for transgender children.

The law earmarks grants for hospitals and clinics for hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgeries.

Assembly member Miguel Santiago says the law provides "critical medical and direct supportive services for transgender, gender non-conforming and/or intersex people, otherwise known as TGI."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, said treatments such as that could have permanent side effects.

"AB 2218 would essentially allow minor children to obtain not just counseling, but also puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and potentially even life-altering surgeries amputations, mutilations, that could leave them permanently sterile all before they turn 18," he said.

Dr. James Dobson, president of the James Dobson Family Institute, said the bill “supports gender mutilation and sterilization.”

"No rational society or compassionate individual could possibly celebrate the mutilation of adolescents or adults. And yet this bill would fund procedures including double mastectomies on adolescent girls and genital amputations and reconstructive procedures for individuals older than 18. This isn't the fulfillment of personal autonomy—this is the celebration of acts of cruelty," Dobson said. "Experimenting on vulnerable children and adults is not just unethical; it is morally repugnant.”

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Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.