Last week, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law a bill that excludes biological males from participating in female sports, becoming the second state to do so.
This is a key piece of legislation that has garnered national attention amid years of tension between the transgender community and those advocating for biological female-only athletic programs.
SB354, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act is designed specifically to preserve opportunities for girls and women to compete fairly as they partake in sports, pursue scholarships, or train for future professional athletic success.
“I have studied the law and heard from hundreds of constituents on this issue,” Hutchinson said in a statement upon signing the bill.
“I signed the law as a fan of women’s sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully. This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition. As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events,” he explained.
The LGBT community has been adamant that biological males who identify as females ought to have equal access to women-only spaces to affirm their gender identity and that for such individuals to take part in male sports would be discriminatory.
Proponents of legislation such as the one signed into law in Arkansas last week, however, argue that biological males retain certain physical advantages over women in spite of any hormone treatment they may undergo.
LifeSite News points to research published in New Zealand’s Journal of Medical Ethics which found that healthy young biological males suffer no “significant” loss of “muscle mass [or power] when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to [below International Olympic Committee guidelines] for 20 weeks,” and that the “indirect effects of testosterone” can still give an athlete an advantage in regard to factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy.”
The researchers concluded that “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Earlier this month, Mississippi signed into law a similar ban and this week, Tennessee became the third state to do so with the signage of a law that would require students to prove their biological sex before participating in sports bans.
South Dakota would have become the second state to enact legislation protecting female sports but Governor Kristy Noem relented on her previous promise to sign the bill over concerns it could backfire after being challenged in court.
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