S.C. House OKs ban on gender-affirming care for minors

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A ban on gender-affirming care for kids and teens in South Carolina is now halfway to reaching the governor’s desk.

The state’s House of Representatives approved the controversial bill Wednesday night after a six-hour debate.

ers argued their push is about protecting children.

“Because our children are not political props,” said House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, R-Pickens, the bill’s lead sponsor.

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But opponents contended enacting these measures will instead harm an already marginalized group of South Carolina kids and teens.

“I wish that we could just call it what it is up here: legislative eugenics,” Rep. Justin Bamberg, D – Bamberg, said.

After an 82-23 vote largely along party lines Wednesday in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the proposal is closer to becoming South Carolina law.

This bill would ban minors in South Carolina from undergoing “gender-transition procedures,” including surgeries, hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

South Carolina is one of the few Southern states without a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The bill its Republican-dominated House approved would bar health professionals from performing gender-transition surgeries, prescribing puberty-blocking drugs and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18 years old. People under 26 could not use Medicaid to cover the costs for such care, and school employees could not withhold knowledge of a student’s transgender identity from their legal guardians.

Doctors and parents told lawmakers last week that such treatment can be lifesaving, allowing young transgender people to live more fulfilling lives. They emphasized that people younger than 18 do not receive gender-transition surgeries in South Carolina and hormone treatments begin only after extensive consultation with health professionals.

It would also prohibit state dollars from going toward these procedures and ban Medicaid from covering them for anyone younger than 27.

Medical providers in South Carolina have said they do not perform these surgeries on anyone younger than 18, but Republicans claimed the ban is still necessary.

“Even if we’re no longer doing surgeries in South Carolina, or we haven’t gotten to that point, we need to be proactive and protect our children before it happens,” said Rep. John McCravy, R – Greenwood.

Democrats countered that lawmakers are trying to interfere in physician-patient relationships.

“For us to sit here and have 124 legislators, none of which are medical doctors, dictate in a statute what a standard of care is, is reckless and it’s wrong,” said Rep. Seth Rose, D – Richland.

Democrats pushed to add a carve out to the bill to allow minors who had already begun hormone and puberty-blocking procedures by the end of 2024 to continue them.

“We’re gonna put these kids not only at risk not only from a medical perspective but also the mental health perspective of it,” said Rep. JA Moore, D-Berkeley, the sponsor of the carve-out amendment.

That amendment was voted down, as was every other attempt Democrats made to change the bill during Wednesday’s debate.

“We as legislators have an obligation to ensure that our children have no harm done to them,” said Rep. RJ May, R-Lexington.

The approved proposal would also prohibit school staff from knowingly withholding information from a parent if their minor child’s perception of their gender is inconsistent with their sex.

During some of the most heated moments of Wednesday’s debate, of the more moderate and larger House Republican Caucus ed Democrats to strike down a push from the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus to expand those school-related requirements.

The unsuccessful proposal from Freedom Caucus Rep. Thomas Beach, R – Anderson, would have mandated school s or counselors immediately notify parents if their minor child asked to use a different pronoun or be called a name other than their legal name or nickname derived from it, or if they told a school employee that their perception of their gender differed from their sex.

“The goal is to have school officials notify parents of the student’s activity and behavior,” Beach said.

But an overwhelming majority of House believed those requirements went too far, with Hiott, the bill’s lead sponsor, among the lawmakers speaking out against them during the debate.

“All we’re doing is making an almost impossible job of being a public-school teacher in this state even harder,” said Rep. Russell Ott, D-Calhoun.

House did make one change to the bill Wednesday, adding on criminal penalties of up to 20 years in prison for doctors who knowingly perform the surgeries on minors that would be outlawed under this bill.

After one more formal vote on this bill Thursday in the House, it next moves to the Senate for its consideration.

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