PIERRE, S.D. — The South Dakota House of Representatives has advanced a bill that would prohibit doctors from prescribing hormones or performing sex-change related surgery on youth under the age of 16.
The Vulnerable Child Protection Act was introduced earlier this month by Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, with the backing of over 40 sponsors.
“Every child in South Dakota should be protected from dangerous drugs and treatments,” Deutsch said in a statement. “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. The solution is compassionate care, and that doesn’t include catastrophically and irreversibly altering their bodies.”
House Bill 1067 states that medical professionals who prescribe puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, or who perform surgeries such as mastectomies, hysterectomies, orchiectomies or vasectomies on those younger than sixteen “for the purpose of attempting to change or affirm the minor’s perception of the minor’s sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” commit a misdemeanor.
Penalties could mean fines of up to $2,000 and/or a year behind bars.
The House voted 46-23 in favor of the measure on Wednesday, sending the matter on to the Senate for consideration.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of South Dakota opposes the measure. It remarked in a statement following the vote that “[b]y 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.”
According to the Washington Post, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has also expressed “concern” surrounding the bill.
“When you take public policy and try to fill parenting gaps with more government, you have to be very careful about the precedent you’re setting,” she remarked to reporters.
However, Deutsch believes that children are too young to make such permanent, life-changing decisions.
“An ever-increasing number of people who had so called sex reassignment as minors now find themselves regretting the decision as they’ve matured. Performing irreversible sex reassignment on a minor whose brain is still developing is wrong,” he said in a statement. “But we can try to prevent harm to those who may later regret it by hitting the pause button before someone pushes a child into a mistake today that cannot be corrected tomorrow.”
In the United Kingdom, a former psychiatric nurse has filed suit against a gender clinic under the National Health Service (NHS) in order to protect children who she says are being given experimental drugs.
Susan Evans states that as an employee, she was uncomfortable with the drugs even being provided to 16-year-olds, and “now the age limit has been lowered, and children as young as perhaps nine or ten are being asked to give informed consent to a completely experimental treatment for which the long-term consequences are not known.”
A woman who was given puberty blockers and hormones as a teenager has joined the legal challenge, remarking that the current practice of encouraging transition efforts is “inadequate as it does not allow for exploration of these gender dysphoric feelings, nor does it seek to find the underlying causes of this condition.”
As previously reported, while some view transgenderism as a medical condition, Christians believe the matter as a spiritual issue — one that stems from the same predicament all men everywhere face without Christ.
The Bible teaches that all are born with the Adamic sin nature, having various inherent feelings and inclinations that are contrary to the law of God, and being utterly incapable of changing by themselves.
It is why Jesus came: to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
Scripture outlines that Jesus came to be the propitiation for men’s sins (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10), a doctrine in Christianity known as substitutionary atonement, and to save men from the wrath of God for their violations against His law (Romans 4:25, Romans 5:9, Romans 5:16), a doctrine known as justification.
The Bible also teaches about regeneration, as in addition to sparing guilty men from eternal punishment, Christ sent his Holy Spirit to make those who would repent and believe the gospel new creatures in the here and now, with new desires and an ability to do what is pleasing in the sight of God by His indwelling and empowerment (Ezekiel 11:19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Titus 3:5).
Jesus said that men must be born again, and be transformed by the Spirit from being in Adam to being in Christ, or they cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3-8).
Ephesians 1:1-3 reads, “And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience — among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
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