FORT LAUDERDALE (LifeSiteNews) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis gave a strong rebuke on Wednesday to a reporter who suggested defending the state’s ban on underage “gender transitions” in court was a waste of taxpayer dollars. 

On Tuesday, Democrat-appointed U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle struck down SB 254, Florida’s ban on transgender drugs and surgeries for minors enacted in 2023, declaring it an “unconstitutional” prohibition of “proper treatment” for gender-confused minors, despite the numerous serious and life-threatening harms linked to “gender transitions.” The governor’s office quickly denounced the ruling and confirmed it would appeal.

READ: DeSantis vows to appeal Democrat judge’s ruling against ban on ‘sex changes’ for children 

The next day, a reporter asked DeSantis, “Your office told us that you plan to appeal the gender-affirming [sic] ruling from yesterday. So my question today, since we’re talking about the budget of taxpayer dollars, why should taxpayer dollars go to this case for the appeal?”

“Because its wrong to mutilate minors. It is wrong to perform a ‘sex change’ on a 16-year old,” DeSantis responded. “You’re not allowed to get a tattoo, but somehow you can have your privates cut off? Give me a break. This is wrong.”

Reporter question from today’s press conference: “Your office told us that you plan to appeal the gender-affirming ruling from yesterday. So my question today, since we’re talking about the budget of taxpayer dollars, why should taxpayer dollars go to this case for the appeal?”… pic.twitter.com/e7WuCdD1bM

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 12, 2024

READ: UK’s National Health Service to stop prescribing puberty blockers to gender-confused children

DeSantis referenced the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision earlier this year upholding an Alabama law “which was almost identical to Florida’s law,” leaving him with “no question” that Hinkle’s ruling will be reversed as well, which Florida must pursue to uphold self-government. 

“If you say that we shouldn’t do that, you’re saying that any liberal judge should be able to veto the policy of the state of Florida, because they go to the same judges every time, we lose almost every time, and then we win on appeal almost every time,” he explained. “We are going to stand up for duly enacted statutes, we’re going to stand up for protecting the innocence of these kids.”

DeSantis also called out the “transition” industry for far less benevolent motives and challenged the premise that their work should be described as “gender-affirming.” 

“When they’re doing a ‘sex change’ on a teenager, there’s a lot of people that want to make money off that, consequences be damned,” he said. “They’re lining their pockets and they can care less about what’s going to happen to that teenager when they become 25, which many regret and have big time problems as a result of that.”

“I think it’s about, are we going to be rooted in truth as a society or not,” the governor added. “If we are rooted in truth, then you would say of course you can’t do these surgeries because it’s not going to take and transform somebody that’s a male into a female.”

A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries grave harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.

Studies find that more than 80% of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that full “reassignment” surgery fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and likely exacerbates it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.

Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”

As DeSantis alluded to, such physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”