(LifeSiteNews) – Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation banning the use of taxpayer funds for gender “transition” procedures for prison inmates, declaring it a “common-sense step.”
Senate Bill 185 states that “no state funds or resources shall be used” for “(s)ex reassignment surgeries or any other surgical procedures that are performed for the purpose of altering primary or secondary sexual characteristics; (h)ormone replacement therapies; and (c)osmetic procedures or prosthetics intended to alter the appearance of primary or secondary sexual characteristics.”
Exceptions would be made for “medical conditions where such treatments are considered medically necessary” unrelated to gender dysphoria or sex reassignment; rare cases of “medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including individuals born with ambiguous genitalia or chromosomal abnormalities resulting in ambiguity regarding the individual’s biological sex”; “partial androgen insensitivity syndrome”; or weaning off hormone replacement therapies that were underway before incarceration.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used for procedures like this, and this legislation codifies that common-sense step,” Kemp declared just before signing the bill at a public event, WMAZ reported.
“A budget is a reflection of our priorities, and by voting red, we are signaling that our priorities lean more toward paying for sex reassignment surgeries than budget dollars for teachers, pre-K students and for law enforcement, which is why in my mind SB 185 is a common-sense piece of legislation for our constituents,” Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton said last month in the floor debate over the bill, WABE added.
In recent years, there has been growing concern around the world over placing men who claim to be women in female prison populations that has proved to be a means of both securing lighter treatment during incarceration and gaining easy access to women to prey upon. Transgender status also has the potential to be exploited to avoid incarceration entirely in some cases, as seen in Wales when a man who identified as a woman received a suspended sentence keeping him out of prison despite physically assaulting two partners within days of each other on the grounds that he would be “vulnerable” behind bars.
In May 2023, investigative journalist James O’Keefe released an interview with U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologist Dr. Linda Noelle, who says that “male and female prisoners “both play the victim card” to obtain gender “reassignment” surgeries at taxpayer expense. “And then they go through (the far-left American Civil Liberties Union), and then the ACLU sues the (U.S. Department of Justice)” when demands for subsidized transition procedures are initially rejected, Noelle told O’Keefe. “And the DOJ, unfortunately, under Merrick Garland, it rolls over. It doesn’t go through the courts, so they just pay people off.”
In California during the summer of 2023, biologically male triple murderer David “Dana Rivers” Wakefield began serving his life sentence in a women’s prison. The state has allowed biological males to be housed with female inmates since 2021, which critics say puts actual female inmates in serious danger.
In May 2024, Hector Bravo Ferrel, a U.S. Army Iraq veteran who served the California Department of Corrections for 16 years, spoke out about his decision to resign in protest of leaders allowing male inmates to exploit “gender-affirming” policies. “They were like kids in the candy store, because they knew they were going from a men’s prison to a females’ prison,” he said.
On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prevent males from being housed with female prisoners and to deny federal funds to the use of inmate transitions.
