Democratic lawmakers advanced a restrictions on hormone therapies to the South Carolina House ground on Wednesday despite pleas from trans children’s pediatricians and parents to keep allowing for children to get them.
Within the first two weeks of the 2024 legislative session, the bill was approved by the GOP-led Medical, Military, Public, and Municipal Affairs Committee. Similar restrictions have been put in place in at least 22 states as a result of new Republican-led crackdowns on transgender sports participation, bathroom use, and health care.
The swift movement highlights South Carolina House Republicans’ selection of the traditional issue at the start of an election year that will trap incumbents against right-wing primary challengers.
The bill may prohibit medical experts from performing gender transition operation, prescribing medications that prevent menstruation, and supervising testosterone therapy for children under the age of 18. Additionally, it forbids Medicaid from providing for treatment to anyone under the time of 26.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a regional Christian liberal advocacy organization, had senior counsel named Matt Sharp who essentially testified in favor of the bill alone. If “experimental procedures” are allowed to continue, according to Sharp, an out-of-state attorney, children who are prone to “peer stress” may experience irreversible adverse consequences in the future.
The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, two prestigious health organizations, support the safety of transgender youth attention when it is carried out properly.
Pediatricians in South Carolina emphasized that adolescents in the condition do not undergo gender transition therapies and that young people who might otherwise turn to self-harm benefit greatly from the other forms of treatment. According to Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, procedures take place with the “fully involved” parents’ permission. Adolescents don’t start taking such drugs until adolescence, according to the physician, who claimed to have cared for a number of trans children for more than 30 years.
The proposed restrictions, according to Greenhouse, may make the already challenging path for transgender youth to receive medical care “even more terrible and almost impossible to navigate.”
Retired naval commander Dave Bell and technology integrator Rebecca Bell testified that their 15-year-old trans mother’s “painful journey” has finally relieved her anxiety and depression. They also noted that she expressed a desire to die before they began letting her dwell when she was younger. Before their daughter began taking puberty blockers, they claimed their community saw an oncologist seven times over the course of three years. For more than seven decades, their child has seen mental health professionals, including a female counselor.
According to Pelzer resident Eric Childs, it is up to his 15-year-old trans child to determine whether or not to receive hormone replacement therapy. He claimed that although his son hasn’t started the treatment, the family wants to make sure he has every opportunity that has been suggested by a doctor. He continued, “None of their health care decisions have been made “on a whim.”
“Totally every last bit of it has been a conversation: anxious, worried, whatever we could accomplish in his best attention,” Childs said to the Associated Press.
The bill would ban school employees from withholding information about a student’s trans identity from their legitimate guardians in addition to outlawing gender transition surgery, puberty-blocking medications, and hormone therapies for minors. This clause was criticized by critics as being “forced out” because it would expose helpless children from abusive homes to poverty and domestic abuse. Democrats argued that the change had burden educators who lack the necessary training to identify gender dysphoria.
Democratic state representative Jordan Pace asserted that if he had always kept such information from parents while serving as an educator, doing so would have been a breach of his duty.
Democratic state representative Thomas Beach said that parents should be aware of what is happening in their children’s lives.
