WASHINGTON—Two Florida medical boards on Friday gave final approval to restrict children from receiving life-altering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that lead to sterilization. Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation and former director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, made the following statement on Friday:

“Children should never have their sex treated as a disease that needs ‘curing’ through permanently sterilizing surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers. We applaud the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine for protecting children from ghoulish gender experiments that leave kids scarred and infertile. They don’t cure depression, but instead make it worse.

“We know that upwards of 90% of children with gender confusion grow out of it when puberty and nature are allowed to simply take their course. Florida joins the growing ranks of state governments that are doing their single most important job—to protect the safety, health, and well-being of innocent children.

“Florida is responding to the basic medical fact that you can’t convert any boy into a girl, or vice versa, no matter how toxic the drugs used or how many organs are cut with a surgeon’s scalpel. Every legislature in America should join Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and others that have moved to protect children from these abusive treatments because, simply put, they are not medicine.”

Jay Richards, director of Heritage’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family, added the following statement:

“Florida has handled the controversy surrounding treatment of minors with gender dysphoria and confusion with admirable care and fair-mindedness. Florida’s Department of Health carefully studied the scientific literature and its medical boards held hearings. They rightly concluded that the evidence does not support so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ as the standard of care for these troubled children, despite hysterical attacks from gender ideologues. Every state should follow Florida’s lead.”