Arkansas law allows malpractice suits against doctors who perform sex change surgeries on minors

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law that would allow children to sue their doctors for malpractice up to 15 years after providing medical sex changes, including hormones.

The law will go into effect over the summer, the AP reports.

The law exposes doctors and medical staff to extreme personal financial consequences by killing malpractice insurance for these cases, making practitioners personally and financially liable for the wrongdoing.

“The governor has said that she supports bills that protect our kids and will support legislation like this that does just that,” a spokeswoman for the governor said in an email to the AP. “Only in the far-left’s woke vision of America is it not appropriate to protect children.”

The state House passed the bill overwhelmingly, 76-17, with one GOP defection voting against the bill. 

Republican Rep. Mary Bentley, House sponsor of the bill, said it “provides much needed safeguards before life-altering medical treatment can begin.”

Bentley shared the story of 18-year-old Chloe Cole, a teenager who regrets receiving transgender reassignment treatment and surgery.

Cole has spoken in favor of bills in other states that aim to limit transgender procedures, which she calls “child abuse” and “medical experimentation.”

“The gender clinic presented my parents with the classic false dichotomy: Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” said Cole, who underwent a double mastectomy at the age of 15 to transition to being a “boy.”

Indeed, the rush to transition kids sexually has been justified by citing highly doubtful, unscientific findings that such treatments prevent suicide amongst children.

“More importantly, there is no long-term evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or ‘transition’ surgeries prevent suicide,” said a report by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign.

“On the contrary, the best long-term research shows that individuals who do go through medical transition kill themselves at a rate 19 times greater than the general population,” the report concluded.

Arkansas already has a law that bans trans procedures on minors, but the law has been blocked while a federal judge considers the case.

The new law would simply allow children who have been treated by doctors, as Cole was, to sue doctors for medical malpractice, even if the judge strikes down the previous ban.

Nearly half of states have considered or are considering an outright ban of trans medical procedures on minors.