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Mississippi Code Title 41. Public Health § 41-141-3

Current as of January 01, 2025 | Updated by Findlaw Staff

For purposes of this chapter, the following terms shall have the meanings ascribed herein:

(a) “Sex” means the biological indication of male and female in the context of reproductive potential or capacity, such as 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;

(b) “Cross-sex hormones” means:

(i) Testosterone or other androgens given to females in amounts that are larger or more potent than would normally occur naturally in healthy sex females; and

(ii) Estrogen given to males in amounts that are larger or more potent than would normally occur naturally in healthy sex males;

(c) “Gender” means the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female;

(d) “Gender reassignment surgery” means any medical or surgical service that seeks to surgically alter or remove healthy physical or anatomical characteristics or features, except for a male circumcision that are typical for the individual's sex, in order to instill or create physiological or anatomical characteristics that resemble a sex different from the individual's sex, including, without limitation:

(i) Surgical procedures such as penectomy, castration, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, clitoroplasty, or vulvoplasty for male patients;

(ii) Surgical procedures such as hysterectomy, oophorectomy, reconstruction of the urethra, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, vaginectomy, scrotoplasty, or implantation of erection or testicular prostheses for female patients;

(iii) Surgical procedures such as augmentation mammoplasty, facial feminization surgery, liposuction, lipofilling, voice surgery, thyroid cartilage reduction, gluteal augmentation, hair reconstruction, or various aesthetic procedures for male patients; or

(iv) Surgical procedures such as subcutaneous mastectomy, voice surgery, liposuction, lipofilling, pectoral implants, or various aesthetic procedures for female patients;

(e) “Gender transition” means the process in which a person goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to his or her sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from his or her sex, and may involve social, legal, or physical changes;

(f)(i) “Gender transition procedures” means any of the following medical or surgical services performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with a gender transition:

1. Prescribing or administering puberty-blocking drugs;

2. Prescribing or administering cross-sex hormones; or

3. Performing gender reassignment surgeries.

(ii) “Gender transition procedures” do not include:

1. Services to persons born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including a person with external sex characteristics that are irresolvably ambiguous, such as those born with forty-six (46) XX chromosomes with virilization, forty-six (46) XY chromosomes with undervirilization, or having both ovarian and testicular tissue;

2. Services provided when a physician has otherwise diagnosed a disorder of sexual development that the physician has determined through genetic or biochemical testing that the person does not have normal sex chromosome structure, sex steroid hormone production, or sex steroid hormone action;

3. The treatment of any infection, injury, disease, or disorder that has been caused by or exacerbated by the performance of gender transition procedures, whether or not the gender transition procedure was performed in accordance with state and federal law or whether or not the funding for the gender transition procedure is permissible under this chapter; or

4. Any procedure for a male circumcision;

(g) “Health care professional” means a person who is licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized by the laws of this state to administer health care in the ordinary course of the practice of his or her profession;

(h) “Physician” means a person who is licensed to practice medicine in this state as provided in Sections 73-25-1 etc.;

(i) “Puberty-blocking drugs” means gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues or other synthetic drugs used in males to stop luteinizing hormone secretion and therefore testosterone secretion, or synthetic drugs used in females which stop the production of estrogens and progesterone, when used to delay or suppress pubertal development in children for the purpose of assisting an individual with a gender transition; and

(j) “Public funds” means federal, state, county, or local government monies, in addition to any department, agency, or instrumentality authorized or appropriated under state law or derived from any fund in which such monies are deposited.

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Cite this article: FindLaw.com - Mississippi Code Title 41. Public Health § 41-141-3 - last updated January 01, 2025 | https://codes.findlaw.com/ms/title-41-public-health/ms-code-sect-41-141-3/

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