Bill Approved to Limit Treatment for Transgender Youth
A bill sent to the Senate in South Dakota would penalize physicians who provide treatments for transgender youth. Lawmakers from other states are considering similar bills as advocacy groups stand in opposition. Read on to learn about the debate around House Bill 1057.
South Dakota’s House of Representatives approved a bill, on February 29th, that would criminalize physicians who treat transgender children with hormones and sex reassignment surgeries. The Vulnerable Child Protection Act will now be sent to the state’s Senate for a committee hearing. Rep. Fred Deutsch, the bill’s primary sponsor, explains the legislation will protect vulnerable children who “are being chemically castrated, sterilized and surgical mutilated.
South Dakota’s House of Representatives is the first state to pass a bill to restrict medical treatment for trangender teens. However, more than half a dozen state houses are considering similar bills.
House Bill 1057
Under the bill, it would be a Class 1 misdemeanor for a physician to prescribe hormone replacement therapy or perform sex reassignment surgery to youth under the age of 16. This includes:
Performing a mastectomy
Gender affirming surgery (vasectomy, penectomy, vaginoplasty and others)
Prescribing, dispensing or administering puberty blocking medication, supraphysiologic doses of testosterone to females and supraphysiologic doses of estrogen to males
Removing any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue.
The penalty would be a maximum of 1 year in jail and a fine of $2,000. Nurses would be exempt from prosecution.
The Debate
Republicans and Democrats debate represent a larger culture war with conflicting values, beliefs and practices. The debate is bigger than just the medical issues and extends into parenting and the role of physicians.
Opposition to the Bill
Parents, many members of the medical community and advocates of transgender youths make the following arguments (although there are many more) in opposition to House Bill 1057:
The bill is a form of discrimination that would withhold life saving treatment
The bill is unconstitutional and the decision about gender expression should be between the youth, parent and doctor.
Sex assignment surgeries and are rarely performed on youth
Puberty blockers, requiring parental consent and extensive counseling, are reversible
Libby Skarin, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, issued a statement after the vote, stating “By blocking medical care supported by every major medical association, the legislature is compromising the health of trans youth in dangerous and potentially life-threatening ways.”
A conservative Christian organization, Liberty Counsel, has offered legal counsel to defend bill, at no cost to state taxpayers.
Proponents of the Bill
Lawmakers supporting the bill make debate these points (among others):
Need to protect youth from making life altering changes until they are old enough to consider all available options
Too young to understand the potential consequences
Sex-reassigment surgery and administration in youth are harmful, abusive and criminal acts
The website https://hb1057.com/, promotes Deutsch’s bill and features resources and videos from the Heritage Foundation, the Minnesota Family Council, a Christian organization.
For Thought
In 2018, the American Nurses Association released a position statement, Nursing Advocacy for LGBTQ+ Populations and applied the nursing code of ethics to this population.
Quote
“..nurses must advocate for patient centered treatment, equal access, equal services, and equal resources for all populations that may be adversely affected by bias or prejudice. Nurses have an ethical duty to honor and respect the identities, beliefs, values, and decisions of all patients.”
This should be left up to the child AFTER the age of 18. Their hormones etc are so screwed up and they go through so many stages growing up. Schools are pushing this agenda on them as well. Why is this topic all of a sudden booming? If this was really genetics we should have had this topic a long time ago being discussed. Let kids be kids. Why do they have to decide in elementary/middle school who they are? They need to be able to be kids and leave the grown up stuff for when they are actually grown up. I am a nurse and I have a daughter struggling with her own identity at 11. I've told her we can revisit this when she is older and knows what everything entails. Right now she needs to go have fun with her friends and not think so hard about it.
Tell the kids in school that. They are all confused in 5th and 6th grade. The kids think it is a choice.. ..that's exactly why I do NOT agree with kids doing anything to change their bodies until they are mentally old enough to make that decision. I've seen one kid "in love" with boys. Then she decided she was trans then pan. Then back to boys. They love the rainbows and Love is Love. There are a few I am sure that really may know. For the most part though, their hormones are wacky and they have no idea what being gay entails. It just seems cool right now cause everyone is doing it.
Tell the kids in school that. They are all confused in 5th and 6th grade. The kids think it is a choice.. ..that's exactly why I do NOT agree with kids doing anything to change their bodies until they are mentally old enough to make that decision. I've seen one kid "in love" with boys. Then she decided she was trans then pan. Then back to boys. They love the rainbows and Love is Love. There are a few I am sure that really may know. For the most part though, their hormones are wacky and they have no idea what being gay entails. It just seems cool right now cause everyone is doing it.
Not one of those children you describe would be a transgendered person that should be allowed any kind of hormone treatment or transition. They aren't the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about genuine transgendered persons, they understand it, they feel it, they know it. They don't flip flop with what is being cool. They are trans...end of discussion.
I'm not around kids other than my nieces and nephew, so I wasn't aware that being gay or transgendered was cool and everyone was doing it. What I tend to read about are the bullied and rejected ones.
I do know there is a time of questioning and discovering, especially for people that don't identify as cisgendered heterosexuals. Things are changing as well. People aren't falling into normals...some people don't even feel they identify with a gender period. Most people are cisgendered heterosexuals and just become whom they are and don't one day decide "gee, I'm going to be my birth gender and heterosexual". Maybe they do...you sound like you know better than me. But I'm skeptical.
Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
Just in from the BBC, legal case in England. Young woman sues because the NHS should have challenged her more when she started gender transition as a teen:
Using the term “enhance one’s appearance” implies these are cosmetic procedures which they are not. They are gender reaffirming procedures, not plastic surgery. Two different things. Individuals seeking these procedures aren’t simply dissatisfied with the shape or size of a part of their anatomy, they instead feel profoundly uncomfortable and “wrong” in their bodies.
They are in fact procedures that are cosmetic. In order to change from one sex to another is not possible with current technology. For a man who wishes to become female that would also require the change of skeleton, chromosomes, add ovaries, uterus, and a myriad of other things. Anyone who took anatomy should understand that. Gender is what sex you consider yourself. Sex cannot be changed. This is not hate, it's science.
The psychological problem of gender dysphoria is one that should be addressed by helping these individuals learn to cope with their distress. Surgery should be a last option, not a first one. And children should be off limits to this.
They are in fact procedures that are cosmetic. In order to change from one sex to another is not possible with current technology. For a man who wishes to become female that would also require the change of skeleton, chromosomes, add ovaries, uterus, and a myriad of other things. Anyone who took anatomy should understand that. Gender is what sex you consider yourself. Sex cannot be changed. This is not hate, it's science.
The psychological problem of gender dysphoria is one that should be addressed by helping these individuals learn to cope with their distress. Surgery should be a last option, not a first one. And children should be off limits to this.
Totally agree with you on this. Changing ones body will help but will not cure the psychological problems.
The Alabama Senate today passed a bill that would make it a crime for doctors to prescribe opposite sex hormones or drugs that block puberty from people under age 19 who identify as transgender.
If they really want to transition, they can make the choice once they're an adult. I think prescribing drugs to inhibit puberty or performing plastic surgery on a child is nothing short of child abuse.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
What child has the mental capacity to make such a drastic decision so early on in life?
Specializes in Advanced Practice Critical Care and Family Nursing.
What's more absurd is this issue has required multiple bills to block the malpractice for now. Most forty-year-olds are suffering an identity crisis of some variety however large or small. So you are willing to allow another human being, with (debatabley) a brain that will not fully develop for at least another decade, during the most hormonal time in their life, make a critical decision that will effect the remainder of life?
Interesting how supporters will evade the strong neuroscience with weak social justice arguments, whereby "parents should be able to make this decision for their children". However, up to that contradictory statement the claim is all about autonomy, individual rights, and the axiomatic charade of "allowing people to be who they want to be". Yet in this instance, even something so critical to all levels of human development, they find it acceptable to hand the bleeding heart rights of the individual over to guardianship authority.
How anyone with the slightest healthcare education, or conscience for that matter, could support this, sleep at night, and even worse dare make a buck doing it and call yourself a professional anything, is impossible.
Debrenee211, LPN
3 Posts
This should be left up to the child AFTER the age of 18. Their hormones etc are so screwed up and they go through so many stages growing up. Schools are pushing this agenda on them as well. Why is this topic all of a sudden booming? If this was really genetics we should have had this topic a long time ago being discussed. Let kids be kids. Why do they have to decide in elementary/middle school who they are? They need to be able to be kids and leave the grown up stuff for when they are actually grown up. I am a nurse and I have a daughter struggling with her own identity at 11. I've told her we can revisit this when she is older and knows what everything entails. Right now she needs to go have fun with her friends and not think so hard about it.