At an event on Monday, Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt highlighted multiple bills he recently signed into law, including Senate Bill 418, which prohibits prison officials from housing men in women’s correctional facilities.

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The bill also requires the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to classify bathrooms, changing areas and sleeping quarters as being exclusively for either male or female inmates. It is set to take effect on Nov. 1.

“We were going to make sure we were protecting women’s spaces in Oklahoma,” said Stitt at the event, according to The Oklahoman.

Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, took to X on Tuesday to celebrate the legislation, thanking Stitt for “defending vulnerable women and biological reality.”

“Validating a man’s feelings or desires should never come at the expense of women’s safety. Thankfully, Oklahoma has now ended the injustice of men in women’s prisons,” she tweeted.

Introduced in February and authored by state Sen. Julie Daniels, SB 418 was passed by the Senate in a vote of 39 to 8, and then passed by the House by a vote of 77 to 15.

Critics of the law included state Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, a Democrat, who told The South Bend Tribune earlier this year that she believed SB 418 was unnecessary.

“That bill doesn’t solve a problem in the lives of Oklahomans,” she claimed. “It is nothing more than politics and a distraction from what Oklahomans sent us here to do.”

In a statement released in May when the bill was signed, Daniels said it was necessary because the state’s laws didn’t overtly prevent officials from placing men in women’s prisons.

“Current policies do not completely rule out the possibility of housing inmates of opposite sexes together,” she stated at the time.

“I felt it was important, especially for the protection of female inmates, to make it unmistakably clear in state law that this will not be permitted in Oklahoma prisons.”

Some states have allowed male inmates to be housed in women’s prisons even if they have a history of physical and sexual violence toward women.

While advocates of this have argued that it’s intended to keep men who identify as women safe from abuse in male prisons, critics have pointed out that it puts women in danger.

Amie Ichikawa, a former inmate and the founder of the women’s advocacy group Woman II Woman, has publicly denounced state governments that house men in women’s prisons, which she experienced in California.

In a bonus episode of The Christian Post podcast series “Generation Indoctrination: Inside The Transgender Battle,” Ichikawa recalled feeling “helpless” during her incarceration when men were first allowed to be housed with women.

“Just to know that you have absolutely no control over your environment, your own physical wellbeing, your mental health, nothing. And there’s really no one you can talk to about it,” she said.

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This article was originally published at The Christian Post. Photo Credit: welcomia via Canva Teams.