Governor Signs Law Making Rhode Island a Sanctuary State for Abortion and Gender-Affirming “Care”
Recent developments should have prompted Rhode Island lawmakers to restrict gender-affirming care, not forge it into law.
Amid growing alarm and shocking revelations concerning gender-affirming “care,” Rhode Island just became the latest state to enshrine the controversial practice into law. Yesterday, Governor Daniel McKee signed the “Healthcare Provider Shield Act,” making Rhode Island a safe haven for both abortion and transgender medicine.
Under the new law, access to abortion and gender-affirming care is a legal right in Rhode Island.
We covered the legislation when it was first introduced earlier this year by Senator Dawn Euer and Representative John G. Edwards in twin bills (SB2262/HB7577) here, followed by the Senate judiciary hearings here.
As we wrote then, the “Healthcare Provider Shield Act” insulates Rhode Island doctors and their patients from civil and criminal complaints filed in other states that restrict these surgeries and treatments.
The law sets up a series of protections against such “hostile litigation,” summarized by the State Legislature announcing its passage:
These include protections from arrest and extradition, subpoena for testimony and documents, professional disciplinary action in Rhode Island on the basis of disciplinary action taken against them in other states and wiretapping and other surveillance.
The new Act also prevents all state public agencies, including law enforcement, from cooperating with out-of-state investigations of protected health care in Rhode Island. It protects personal medical information from being shared with law enforcement agencies in other states. It also protects doctors from losing their licenses or medical malpractice insurance coverage over their abortion or transgender care services.
Taken altogether, the Shield Act essentially makes abortion and transgender healthcare providers an untouchable class of defendants when sued from another state.
Supporters of the law say doctors are entitled to that protection. “We need to be able to continue to do our jobs without fear,” testified one of those doctors at the hearings, “and we deserve to be able to provide unrestricted, evidence-based healthcare without fear of legal repercussions.”
But recent developments show it’s the vulnerable patients, not their self-serving doctors, who deserve protection from these barbaric treatments that turn out to be not so evidence-based after all.
The tragic, lifelong consequences of medical transitioning are much more widely known than they were even a year ago.
Stories of “detransitioners”—individuals who were medically transitioned as children and later seek to reverse it—came to light earlier this year when, to the surprise of many, the New York Times published a candid piece on their plight.
There is now growing public awareness that these children were being used as guinea pigs to test out gender-affirming care—a radical “no-questions-asked” model for treating gender dysphoria, recently re-endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Abandoning the traditional protocol of “watching and waiting,” AAP policy advises doctors to “affirm” a child’s stated desire to change genders by prescribing puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. Far too many of these children come to regret these life-altering treatments. They “detransition”—and sue the doctors they allege caused permanent damage to their health.
In fact, Rhode Island is the legal battleground in two high-stakes detransitioner cases we covered here. [*] The AAP is the defendant in one of those lawsuits, which alleges the medical group knew their gender-affiriming care policy was based on lies and misrepresentations pushed by activist doctors. “The AAP thought trans was the next civil rights crusade and got boondoggled by enthusiastic young doctors,” said one of the longtime AAP members quoted in the complaint. “There was clearly no fact-checking,” he said.
We’ve also learned that these self-interested gender-affirming care doctors have been causing irreversible damage to their pediatric patients knowing full well their treatments are anything but scientific. They rely on ideologically driven guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender (WPATH)—guidance Rhode Island’s new Act expressly incorporates into its definition of “gender-affirming health care services.”
But earlier this year, leaked files from WPATH revealed that the so-called “medically appropriate evidence-based care” advocated by the Act’s sponsors turns out to be neither.
And just yesterday, news that the Biden administration pressured WPATH to lower the age limits for trans surgeries tore through X/ formerly Twitter:
Biden's trans HHS assistant sec Dr Rachel Levine pressured WPATH to eliminate age guidelines for child sex changeshttps://t.co/7WmeewrlsZ
— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) June 26, 2024
Even the New York Times covered the story, more proof, some say, that public opinion is turning against performing these sex-change procedures on minors:
NYT covers @jessesingal story about Levine pushing to remove age limits on surgery for minors.
NYT uses an unflattering pic of Levine to boot!
The tide… is it turning?!? pic.twitter.com/MaitCfFTL0
— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) June 26, 2024
Meanwhile, England’s landmark youth gender study, the Cass Review, prompted a return to common sense in the UK. The study confirmed the “remarkably weak” evidence behind gender medicine. The UK has since banned puberty blockers in both public and private clinics to “avoid serious danger to health.” The tide is turning there in the wake of the report.
All these developments should have prompted Rhode Island lawmakers to restrict gender-affirming care, not forge it into law. The world is waking up to what may be the most shameful episode in modern medical history. And Rhode Island just came down on the wrong side of it.
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Comments
“NYT uses an unflattering pic of Levine to boot!”
Does there exist a flattering pic of Levine… in any universe?
You can put lipstick on a Levine but he’s still a Levine.
“Rhode Island goes all in for child mutilation.” Jeez, where’s a killer asteroid when we need it to hit that godforsaken state?
Make sure the Prof and his family and friends are out of state on vacation.
It’s to the point where I’d as soon take a vacation in Cuba as ever go back to revisit my home state… or, for that matter, to foray anywhere east of Pennsylvania. (Sorry, NH, but you’re landlocked by commies, and my RV doesn’t float.)
And his name is Dick.
Seriously.
Transgenderism is a mental illness. Instead of accommodating these people, they should be sent for help. Those who promote and advocate this insanity are just plain evil and should be treated accordingly.
The law should be deemed presumptively invalid as a prima facie violation of the full faith and credit clause.
It appears as if the legislation prevents malpractice insurance companies from charging extra premium based on their abortion and Frankenstein practice.
Will some carriers need to close down their Rhode Island business?
Sad news. Well, if that isn’t a kick in the pants. It’s time the good professor sold the Rhode Island homestead and moved to a Red state of his choosing.
If it works it might help save Republicans from their own state’s actions.
If the American left excels at one thing… it’s doubling down on stupid in the face of contrary evidence. They just refuse to accept reality when their feels get in the way.
McKee, another nice Irish Catholic. I’m sure he hobnobs with drunken, queer bishops.
While there will be lawsuits against these mutilating surgeons, I suspect the biggest cases on the horizon will be the off-label prescription of hormones that were never designed nor approved for what they’re being used for. These cases will be fought in federal court, not state court.
How much would you like to bet that China will flood our country with these hormones, sending it in with their fentanyl poison?
It will make the separation of states, that much easier
The middle will not hold
The Governor of MA just did the same thing by executive order.
Disgraceful.
While the rest of the world is running away from “gender affirming care” in recognition of the damage it is doing to young people these loons are enshrining it in law.
Only because Mayor Wu of Boston couldn’t. Besides, she has her hands full being a “sanctuary city” and displacing black children from their recreation centers in Roxbury etc.
These people still characterizing their political opponents as cultists?
“There is now growing public awareness that these children were being used as guinea pigs to test out gender-affirming care—a radical “no-questions-asked” model for treating gender dysphoria, recently re-endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Abandoning the traditional protocol of “watching and waiting,” AAP policy advises doctors to “affirm” a child’s stated desire to change genders by prescribing puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.”
This is called human vivisection, or worse, human child vivisection.
To wit:
vivisection
noun
viv·i·sec·tion ˌvi-və-ˈsek-shən ˈvi-və-ˌsek-
Synonyms of vivisection
1: the cutting of or operation on a living animal usually for physiological or pathological investigation
broadly : animal experimentation especially if considered to cause distress to the subject
2: minute or pitiless examination or criticism
Note that the EU has finally, but far more quickly than the U.S., come to the conclusion that “gender affirming care” is ineffective and actually more damaging to the child. It is experimentation on children to suit a deranged mindset in deluded people. I am most ashamed of the parents that go along with this farce.
Not Rhode Island though! They must be so proud.
The “Ocean State” is now the “Perversion state.” At least it is easy to avoid and boycott.
good post
there is that case out of texas where fjb goes after the doctor who is exposing the hospital(s) that are mutilating the children
And the nurse
when the states divide up this time its going to be interesting
lets see here is a list of who the left hates:
fetus
babies
children
teens
adults
women
men
Christians
Jews
.
Those ARE included in==
fetus
babies
children
teens
adults
women
men
–unless you are supposing there are nonhuman Christians and Jews wandering the planet.
“a Sanctuary State for Abortion and Gender-Affirming “Care””
Fine, Just don’t come begging the Feds for money to pay for it..
RI voters can bask in their woke-ism and foot the bill as well.
RI voters have been living for decades with their hands in each others’ pockets. RI, where any native will tell you that the secret to a successful career is to “get a good job with the government (you get a pension and everything).”
I disagree that the tides are turning due to coverage of this in the New York Times. The New York Times has actually been gender critical for a few years now. This isn’t much different.
It’s worth mentioning that the UK’s ban on puberty blockers in private clinics is temporary and only lasts for 3 months. It will be legal again in September when the ban expires
They might as well throw Euthanasia in, too. Make Rhode Island a full-service Death and Dismemberment state.
It also protects doctors from losing their licenses or medical malpractice insurance coverage over their abortion or transgender care services.
How is this legal? Seems it should be up to the insurance company if they want to insure doctors and institutions or not.
The insurance companies should pre-emptively suspend all coverage for physicians in RI, not for the physicians’ actions, but for the State’s actions.
The usual hook is, “If you want to sell ANY kind of insurance in our state, you have to offer insurance for the following situations and conditions.” The ultimate counter is, “sayonara, assholes.” There’s a lot of sayonara being sung in California right now, and compared to California, the business one would lose in Little Rhody wouldn’t even amount to the condensation on the ice bucket.
Does this mean that a RI doc can still be charged for a crime in another state? And that the doc can be arrested if he/she sets foot in that state? Let them stay confined in RI.
.
I’m not sure how someone can be prosecuted in any State when the alleged crime took place in another State. If the act isn’t criminalized in the State in which the act was committed, it is not a crime. Is this legislation just posturing/virtue signaling by RI pols?
Ongoing U.S. Detransitioner cases
https://themisresourcefund.org/detransitioner-cases/
Detrans Lawfare: Holding “Gender” Doctors Accountable | with Lynn Chadwick & Kathleen Dooley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Nsw4rSVFw