“This law shuts the door on best-practice medical care and puts politics between parents, their children, and their doctors,” a statement from the ACLU of Mississippi read. “But this fight is far from over — we are determined to build a future where Mississippi is a safe place to raise every child.”
The legislation bans any surgery that is designed to alter or remove a healthy physical or anatomical characteristic or feature on a person’s body to make that feature or characteristic resemble the opposite sex unless the person is at least 18 years old.
In addition to banning surgery on reproductive organs, the law prohibits facial surgeries, voice surgeries, hair reconstruction, or any other aesthetic procedure designed to make the child appear as though he or she is the opposite sex.
The prescription of puberty-blocking drugs, which are designed to halt testosterone secretion in boys and halt the production of estrogen and progesterone in girls are also banned when prescribed to assist with gender transition. The law also bans cross-sex hormone therapy for children, a treatment that increases testosterone in girls and estrogen in boys to levels larger than what naturally occurs in children of a given sex or age.
Children born with a medically verifiable sex development disorder are exempt from the law. This includes children whose sex characteristics are irresolvably ambiguous at birth and those who are born with both ovaries and testicular tissue. It includes exceptions for children who are not born with a normal sex chromosome structure.
Under the law, any medical professional who violates the law or assists another person in violating the law will have his or her medical license revoked. Any patient who receives drugs or surgeries as a minor, in violation of the law, can file a lawsuit against the medical professionals involved up to 30 years after the doctor began providing illegal services. The person will be able to seek financial damages.