(LifeSiteNews) — Well-known “destransitioner” Chloe Cole over the weekend blasted Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine after he vetoed a bill that would shield gender-confused children from destructive transgender drugs and surgeries and protect girls’ sports.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday vetoed HB 68, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, designed to protect children and teenagers from transgender procedures and safeguard girls’ sports from the incursions of males claiming to be “transgender,” LifeSiteNews previously reported. The measure had been passed by both chambers of the state legislature by wide margins, and lawmakers are expected to override the veto.
DeWine has received immediate pushback for his decision from conservatives and opponents of transgender ideology, including Cole, who was put on puberty blockers at 13 and underwent a double mastectomy at 15 before becoming a prominent public figure opposing transgender mutilation.
READ: Conservatives slam Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine for vetoing bill to protect children from transgenderism
Speaking to “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday, Cole said that having minors undergo permanent, life-altering surgeries in an effort to change their physical appearance is nothing short of “abuse” and said that Ohio’s governor has become “complicit” in that injustice through his decision to nix the legislation.
“This is the sterilization and mutilation of thousands of children happening within a state that is being entirely complicit in the choice to continue this,” she said.
According to Cole, DeWine signed the legislation shortly after she told him her own personal story via a Zoom call, during which conversation the governor had appeared “visibly disturbed” to hear about her gender mutilation.
And Cole wasn’t the only one to go public with her traumatic experiences in support of Ohio’s HB 68.
In November, 26-year-old Morgan Keller, who underwent debilitating surgical and pharmaceutical interventions, told lawmakers that practitioners had “affirmed” her gender confusion without addressing her underlying mental health issues, resulting in devastating, permanent effects, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
“I wish I had been told ‘no’ by the practitioners that I trusted. I wish I could say that I’m the exception to the rule, but everybody in this room knows that is false,” she said. “I come to you wearing the scars of this medical scandal, asking you to please vote in support of House Bill 68 to protect Ohio’s children.”
READ: Young woman who ‘detransitioned’ defends Ohio bill banning transgender mutilation of children
In comments to “Fox & Friends,” Cole said that Gov. DeWine “knows just how horrific this is to do to children” and charged that his decision to veto the measure cannot be attributed to “incompetence or ignorance.”
While DeWine said he agrees with “a number of” the concerns raised by the bill’s backers and would direct state agencies to “begin work on administrative rules” to address some of them, including that “no surgery of this kind should ever be performed on those under the age of 18,” he claimed that his decision to veto the bill was based on the scientifically baseless premise that gender-confused children need transgender interventions to prevent suicide.
In a press conference, DeWine said his veto came after speaking with parents who alleged that their children “would be dead today if they had not” undergone transgender interventions, as well as adults who stated that “they would have taken their life when they were teenagers.”
The Ohio Republican further claimed that signing the legislation would have been equivalent to “saying that the State, that the government, knows what is best medically for a child rather than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.”
However, Cole noted that her parents had also been told the “lie” that they were either going to have “a very suicidal and eventually dead daughter or a living ‘transgender son.’”
“But that is not true,” she said. “These children are not committing suicide because they were born in the wrong body. This is an entirely psychological issue and these children are not getting the help that they need.”
“Parents don’t have a right to abuse their children. This is no different from any form of abuse.”
“Parents don’t have a right to abuse their children. This is no different from any form of abuse.”
Cole added that children who are gender-confused “need psychiatric help” in order to “know that they’re perfect in the bodies that they were born with.”
She said that if the Ohio governor actually believes that children are being born in the wrong body, he ought to “be expelled from office.”
As LifeSiteNews has noted, existing research does not support the assertions that transgender intervention is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.
In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality. In addition, studies indicate that more than 80% of children suffering from gender dysphoria will outgrow it on their own by late adolescence without surgical or pharmaceutical interventions.
And a lengthy study by Richard Bränström, Ph.D., and John E. Pachankis, Ph.D. that appeared to support the theory that “gender-affirming care” improves mental health was later retracted. A 2020 correction found the “results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”
Despite the serious risks and complications, young people across the country have been actively encouraged in the culture and their classrooms to adopt “transgender,” “gender fluid,” or “non-binary” identities, leading to a spike in transgender identification and subsequent surgical and chemical mutilation by “affirming” practitioners, LifeSiteNews has extensively reported. Even prominent leaders in the transgender medical field have acknowledged that “social contagion” is a factor in rising numbers of transgender identification among children and youth.