"WDI USA Credited for State Bills Banning Child Medicalization to Disguise Sex"

March 1, 2023

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This was originally posted on the blog of the US chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA) here.

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Bills on gender-affirming care — dubbed the SAFE Act — have been pushed in 15 state legislatures, and most have been based on model legislation provided by the Women’s Declaration International USA.

That sentence appeared in the Columbia Missourian¹ on Feb. 26, 2023 in this article, which announces the introduction of a Missouri bill banning medical procedures intended to disguise the sex of minors.

Not only does the article rightly credit WDI USA for much of the framing of new state legislation; it publishes the entire text of our SAFE Act model bill. WDI USA is in the news in Missouri. 

In early 2022, WDI USA’s State Legislative Advocacy (SLA) team, coordinated at that time by Lauren Levey, noticed that a number of states were proposing bills intended to ban medical procedures on minors for the purpose of disguising their sex. But well intentioned as they were, their language and especially their definitions of terms were written in the circular, deceptive transpeak based on sex stereotypes and the writings of those who promote gender identity ideology. The result was that the legislators’ good intentions in opposing gender identity ideology were significantly undermined by eye-rolling nonsense such as “living as a gender that corresponds to their biological sex.” 

So in early March of 2022, the SLA team together with WDI USA president Kara Dansky wrote a SAFE Act model bill. The team has since sent it out in relation to more than 20 bills in many states, together with a cover letter explaining why our language is more accurate, useful, and effective. One of those bills was Missouri HB 2649. On March 7, 2022, the SLA team sent our model bill and explanatory cover letter to Missouri State Representative Suzie Pollack in relation to HB 2649. 

That badly worded bill, HB 2649, died and did not become law. But similar bills in Arkansas and Arizona did become law last year. Then, on January 4, 2023, a new Missouri SAFE Act bill, SB 49, was introduced in the Missouri Senate. This new bill differs from the WDI USA model bill, but borrows language from it. It is now making its way through the Missouri legislature. Not only is the new Missouri bill better than last session’s bill; but the past year has seen a rise in awareness — among parents and medical personnel especially — of the harms associated with medicalizing children in the service of the lie that is gender identity ideology. 

Thanks to the efforts of WDI USA in getting the word out generally and the SLA team in particular, a reporter at the Columbia Missourian reached out to the current SLA team coordinator for confirmation that WDI USA had authored the SAFE Act model bill. As a result, the mutilation of kids by means of surgeries and administration of wrong-sex hormones may now have a better chance of being banned in Missouri and in other states whose lawmakers are sure to be watching closely. As the Columbia Missourian notes, “Other states, including Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina and Tennessee, have all introduced similar bills after being sent model legislation by WDI USA.” [emphasis added] 

The word is out, and we wrote it. 

 ¹ The Columbia Missourian is affiliated with the Missouri School of Journalism at Missouri University.