House Bill 1125 bans surgery for anyone younger than 18. It is headed to Gov. Tate Reeves after it passed 33-15 in the state Senate this week. Legislators in the state House approved it 78-30 in late January.
Similar legislation has been approved in Utah, South Dakota, Alabama, and Arkansas. The bill in The Magnolia State is known as the "Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act."
When the bill reaches his desk, Gov. Reeves (pictured at left) made it clear in his recent State of the State address he would sign the bill: Minors cannot consent.
“The fact is that we set age restrictions on driving a car and on getting a tattoo. We don't let 11-year-olds enter an R-rated movie alone,” Reeves pointed out. “Yet some would have us believe that we should push permanent body-altering surgeries on them at such a young age.”
In an interview with AFN, after the bill’s passage, House Speaker Philip Gunn similarly points out minors cannot legally buy cigarettes or alcohol, or sign a marriage certificate.
"There are a lot of decisions that we do not allow children to make until they are of age and able to make more mature decisions,” he tells AFN. “And I don't know of anything that has a more life-long lasting impact than a decision to change one's sex."
Contrast that view with the Human Rights Campaign, the homosexual-rights lobbying group, which operates a branch in Mississippi. The group’s state director said Mississippi politicians are “interfering” with the rights of parents to support their transgender children.
In numerous stories across the country, however, alarmed parents have spoken out after learning homosexual activists were teaching transgender ideology to their children without their consent. That happens because those classroom teachers, who believe they are helping gender-confused children, view the disapproving parents as the enemy.
The spokesman for Human Rights Campaign Mississippi also accused state leaders of “attacking L-G-T-Q-plus Mississippians.”
Asked if he is concerned about lawsuits to fight the new law, Gunn tells AFN the legislature will not run from legislation over concern for a lawsuit.
"We deal with things we think are right and good,” he says.
