Republicans Who Can’t Oppose Child Mutilation Should Get Out Of Office, by Joy Pullmann

Protecting people from murder, assault, battery, and mutilation by criminals and predators is the first and most basic government function. A state that cannot do this has no moral legitimacy to do anything else.

By Joy Pullmann, The Federalist, April 8, 2021

To explain his veto of a bill that would have protected children from transgender genital mutilation, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson claimed it would be “a vast government overreach.”

Using language similar to North Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s in vetoing a bill to protect girls’ sports from unfair and irrational transgender male competition, Hutchinson further claimed:

I don’t shy away from the battle when it is necessary and defensible. But the most recent action of the general assembly, while well intended, is off course. And I must veto House Bill 1570.

House Bill 1570 would put the state as the definitive oracle of medical care overriding parents, patients, and healthcare experts. While in some instances the state must act to protect life, the state should not presume to jump into the middle of every medical, human, and ethical issue. This would be, and is, a vast government overreach. …