South Carolina Republicans back trans youth health care ban despite pushback

[Jessica_Rose]

South Carolina Republicans back trans youth health care ban despite pushback from parents, doctors

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/south-carolina-republicans-back-trans-youth-health-care-ban-despite-pushback-from-parents-doctors/ar-AA1mLzg0?cvid=c7c3dbd9183748d283112ed4d6be778b&ei=62

Story by By JAMES POLLARD (10 Jan 2023)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Pleas from transgender children's pediatricians and parents to keep allowing such kids to receive hormone therapies failed to stop Republican lawmakers from advancing a ban on those treatments to the South Carolina House floor on Wednesday.

The GOP-led Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee voted to advance the bill within the first two days of the 2024 legislative session.

The bill would bar health professionals from performing gender transition surgery, prescribing puberty-blocking drugs and overseeing hormone therapy for anyone under 18 years old. It also prevents Medicaid from covering such care for anyone under the age of 26.

Matt Sharp, senior counsel for a national Christian conservative advocacy group called the Alliance Defending Freedom, appeared virtually as the lone public testifier supporting the bill. Sharp, an out-of-state lawyer, claimed that children susceptible to "peer pressure" might experience irreversible negative consequences later in life if "experimental procedures" are allowed to continue.

Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, endorse transgender youth care as safe when administered properly.

South Carolina pediatricians stressed that minors in the state do not receive gender transition surgeries and that the other forms of care are lifesaving for young people who might otherwise turn to self-harm.