Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law a bill that makes it a crime for doctors to provide children with so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries or medications, including puberty blockers.
Under the new law, dubbed the “Vulnerable Child Protective Act,” health professionals could be charged with a felony and punished with up to 10 years in prison if they knowingly perform surgeries or provide medications to a child in order to help “affirm the child’s perception of the child’s sex if that perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”
The law specifically bans a host of surgeries involving sterilization and genital mutilation from being performed on people under 18. Among those irreversible procedures is mastectomy (the removal of breasts) as well as phalloplasty and vaginoplasty, the surgical construction of flesh structures resembling male and female genitalia, respectively….