RALEIGH, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews) – The North Carolina Legislature has given final approval to a bill that would reserve female student athletic programs for actual females, setting up another veto confrontation with Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper.
The News & Observer reported that the North Carolina House voted 62-43 last Thursday to pass the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which excludes biological males from middle- and high school as well as collegiate sports’ teams meant specifically for women and girls. The bill would apply to public schools as well as some private institutions.
The bill previously passed the state Senate 31-17. Overall, it passed with just two Democrat votes, one from each chamber. It is expected to be vetoed by Cooper, but ultimately enacted into law by the legislature, which is controlled by a Republican super-majority.
“Today the General Assembly affirmed the rights under Title IX of female student athletes in North Carolina,” NC Values executive director Tami Fitzgerald said June 22. “Women and girls who train for countless hours and years in their sports will have a level playing field, and their opportunities will be protected if this legislation becomes law. This bill will also guard the safety of females. The severe injuries of Payton McNabb caused by the strength of a trans athlete shows bodies play sports, not identities. State and national polling shows support for this type of legislation is overwhelmingly high, and I urge Governor Cooper to side with women and girls by signing this bill into law.
“I look forward to North Carolina joining the other 21 states which have enacted this type of pro-woman legislation for female athletes,” she added.
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted by the left as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes in this way undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Last month, Cooper vetoed a bill to ban most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, only to be overridden by the legislature.