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This website publishes administrative rules on their effective dates, as designated by the adopting state agencies, colleges, and universities.

Rule 3701-59-06 | Hospital quality standards for gender reassignment surgery and genital gender reassigment surgery for minors.

 
An Emergency Filing is currently in effect for this rule. Please access the Register of Ohio to search this rule number and obtain further details.

(A) As used in this rule:

(1) "Biological sex," "Birth sex," and "sex" mean the biological indication of male and female, including sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, gonads, and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual's psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.

(2) "Gender reassignment surgery" means any surgery performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with gender transition that seeks to surgically alter or remove healthy physical or anatomical characteristics or features that are typical for the individual's biological sex, in order to instill or create physiological or anatomical characteristics that resemble a sex different from the individual's birth sex, including genital or non-genital gender reassignment surgery.

(3) "Gender transition" means the process in which an individual goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to his or her biological sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from his or her biological sex, including social, legal, or physical changes.

(4) "Genital gender reassignment surgery" means surgery performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with gender transition and includes both of the following:

(a) Surgeries that sterilize, such as castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, orchiectomy, and penectomy; or

(b) Surgeries that artificially construct tissue with the appearance of genitalia that differs from the individual's biological sex, such as metoidiplasty, phalloplasty, and vaginoplasty.

(B) It is impermissible for gender reassignment surgery or genital gender reassignment surgery or any direct or indirect referral for such procedures to be provided at a hospital to any minor individual.

(1) "Direct or indirect referral" includes, but is not limited to, in any way facilitating such care at another facility or providing any resources or information on where or how to receive such care.

(C) This rule does not prohibit a physician from treating, including by performing surgery on or prescribing drugs or hormones for, a minor individual who meets any of the following:

(1) Was born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including an individual with external biological sex characteristics that are irresolvably ambiguous, such an as individual born with forty-six XX chromosomes with virilization, forty-six XY chromosomes with undervirilization, or having both ovarian and testicular tissue;

(2) Received a diagnosis of a disorder of sexual development, in which a physician has determined through genetic or biochemical testing that the individual does not have normal sex chromosome structure, sex steroid hormone production, or sex steroid hormone action for a biological male or biological female;

(3) Needs treatment for any infection, injury, disease, or disorder that has been caused or exacerbated by the performance of gender transition services, whether or not the services were performed in accordance with state or federal law.

Last updated April 22, 2024 at 2:14 PM

Supplemental Information

Authorized By: 3701.13, 3722.06
Amplifies: 3701.13, 3722.06
Five Year Review Date: 5/3/2029