‘Children need to wait until they’re mature to do it…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A new bill in South Dakota would make it a felony for a medical professional to perform a gender transition medical procedure or prescribe hormonal replacement therapy for minors.
The bill, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, says that any attempt “to change or affirm the minor’s perception of the minor’s sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” would be prosecuted.
Perpetrators would face a Class 4 felony, which carries up to a 10-year prison sentence in South Dakota, according to NBC News.
The legislation, which was schedule for a hearing Wednesday on the state’s House floor, is a “pause button” for minors too young to make an “overwhelming and life-changing” decision, said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Fred Deutsch.
“Children need to wait until they’re mature to do it,” Deutsch said. “
The solution for children’s identification with the opposite sex isn’t to poison their bodies with mega-doses of the wrong hormones, to chemically or surgically castrate and sterilize them, or to remove healthy breasts and reproductive organs,” he continued. “The solution is compassionate care, and that doesn’t include catastrophically and irreversibly altering their bodies.”
The bill has more than 45 sponsors, and while Democratic lawmakers have vowed to oppose it, they comprise only 16 percent of the state House and 14 percent of the Senate.
The South Dakota American Civil Liberties Union branch said the bill is an attempt to “stigmatize” and “undermine” transgender children.
“Transgender kids, like all kids, deserve a chance to experience joy, to learn in a safe environment, to get the health care that they need, and to survive into adulthood,” said Libby Skarin, ACLU’s South Dakota policy director.
But Deutsch countered that transgender procedures and hormones are dangerous because of the psychological and physical toll they take on minors.
The bill does not prevent transgender children from “socially” transitioning, Deutsch added, but it does protect them from permanent treatments that could negatively affect them.