During a press conference this week, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed doctors who perform transgender surgeries on children and said that they should be held legally liable for their actions.
DeSantis discussed the how “very young kids” need to be protected from what leftists have called “gender affirming care.”
“But they don’t tell you what that is, is they are actually giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys,” DeSantis said. “That’s wrong, and so we’ve stood up and said both from the health and children well-being perspective, you don’t disfigure 10, 12, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria.”
“Eighty percent of it resolves anyways by the time they get older,” DeSantis continued. “So why would you be doing this?”
“I think these doctors need to get sued for what’s happening,” DeSantis added.
Ron DeSantis:
"They wanna castrate these young boys. That's wrong… I think these doctors need to get sued for what's happening." pic.twitter.com/Ds48vQwdF6
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 3, 2022
DeSantis’ comments come the same week that he suspended Florida’s State Attorney Andrew Warren for refusing to do his job by upholding the state’s laws on gender-transition surgery for children.
“State Attorneys have a duty to prosecute crimes as defined in Florida law, not to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on his personal agenda,” DeSantis said in a statement. “It is my duty to hold Florida’s elected officials to the highest standards for the people of Florida.”
As explained in a press release from DeSantis’ office, Warren was suspended for “neglect of duty… The Governor has the authority under the Florida Constitution to suspend state officials for reasons of misfeasance, malfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony. The Governor has further authority to fill that office by appointment for the duration of the suspension.”
As noted by DeSantis’ order suspending Warren and appointing Lopez, “Warren demonstrated his incompetence and willful defiance of his duties as a state attorney as early as June 2021, when he signed a ‘Joint Statement’ with other elected prosecutors in support of gender-transition treatments for children and bathroom usage based on gender identity.”
Warren’s statement said, “[W]e pledge to use our discretion and not promote the criminalization of genderaffirming healthcare or transgender people.”
“Bills that criminalize safe and crucial medical treatments or the mere public existence of trans people do not promote public safety, community trust, or fiscal responsibility. They serve no legitimate purpose. As such, we pledge to use our settled discretion and limited resources on enforcement of laws that will not erode the safety and well-being of our community. And we do not support the use of scarce criminal justice and law enforcement resources on criminalization of doctors who offer medically necessary, safe, gender-affirming care to trans youth, parents who safeguard their child’s health and wellbeing by seeking out such treatments, or any individuals who use facilities aligned with their gender identity,” it added. “We are committed to ending this deeply disturbing and destructive criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare and transgender people.”
