Emergency rules to make it much more challenging for transgender youth and adults to access puberty blockers, hormone treatments or gender transition surgery is about "protecting patients," Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told Newsmax on Monday.

Bailey calls certain gender-affirming medical procedures experimental, arguing that the surgeries need substantial guardrails. He told Newsmax's "National Report" that "the science backs up that there are zero FDA approvals of clinical trials approving the notion that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are safe for the treatment of gender dysphoria," adding that, "if that is true for kids, it is also true for adults."

The new emergency rules, which are set to go into effect on Thursday, mandate that anyone receiving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or gender transition surgery receive 15 hourly sessions with a psychologist or psychiatrist over at least 18 months.

It bars physicians from prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones unless a patient has three consecutive years of medical documentation showing gender dysphoria.

Bailey slammed critics by stating, "Why does the left not want there to be safeguards in place to protect parents. And more importantly, how did these 'health care clinics' ever obtain medical malpractice insurance without doing these basic, common-sense safeguards."

He stressed that "all we are asking for here is that there be an assessment to determine what mental health conditions exist, that there be access to mental health treatment, that we obtain and retain real parental consent for the kids and we track adverse outcomes. That is common sense patient protection, so I am amazed the left wants to vilify me for trying to protect patients."

Bailey said that in addition to the emergency measure, he is "encouraged by the work that the Missouri Legislative Assembly is doing as well to codify more permanent protections."

Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Missouri have promised "they will take any necessary legal action" against the emergency rule, stating that "we should have the freedom to be ourselves and live our lives. Our freedom is what is at stake in the unelected attorney general’s illegal twisting of consumer protection laws to insert the government into medical decisions adults make with their doctors," the Springfield News-Leader reported.

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