South Carolina lawmakers proposed a bill that would make it illegal for doctors to prescribe hormones and antidepressants or operate on transgender teenagers and children.
The bill, if signed into law, would make gender reassignment impossible for people under the age of 18.
Its objective is to outlaw drugs to treat ‘symptoms of clinically significant distress resulting from gender dysphoria,’ including anxiety or depression that develops from being assigned a gender at birth that does not match the child’s identity.
State Representative Steward Jones said to the Post and Courier that the proposed bill is to “protect children.”
However, the bill hovers over the faces of pediatricians’ group recommendations that showing support to gender affirmation may lessen the suicide rate among trans community.
Less than 1% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender.
But a study of hundreds of children, conducted by University of Washington, found that trans children know who they are as early as their cisgender friends do.
It was found that these kids’ clear senses of identifies do not depend on whether they have transitioned or not.point 333 |
But it found that children “develop a strong sense of identity at an early age, that this identity is not necessarily determined by sex assigned at birth, and that children may hold onto this identity even when it conflicts with others’ expectations.point 213 |
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In that study, kids who identified as transgender had transitioned ‘socially.’ This means they identified by pronouns according to their gender identity and not the one assigned to them when they were born.
Even so, the American Academy Pediatrics recommended a ‘gender-affirming’ approach to the health care of these children as these recommendations could be life-saving.
The AAP suggested that gender-affirming practices could reduce the rate of 31% of trans children who report previous suicide attempts and high rate of 56% of those who have suicidal thoughts – numbers among a group that accounts for only 0.7% of American youths.
However, not all parents, courts or lawmakers see eye-to-eye with the AAP.
South Carolina Representative Jones and his proposed bill suggest concerns that parents or guardians may push their kids into transition.
He told the Post and Courier that the Youth Gender Reassignment Prevention Act is designed to keep youth from “being pressured or bullied in any kind of circumstance to have their gender reassigned.”
Jones added: “[Reassignment has] almost been weaponized, and this is to protect children.”
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