Bill banning hormones for transgender youth passes Senate subcommittee

COLUMBIA — A ban on gender-transition hormones and surgeries for transgender youth advanced Wednesday after a panel of senators gave the bill its first round of approval in the Senate.

The measure narrowly passed 4-3 along party lines after a series of hearings held over a week-long period. The Senators heard competing testimony from supporters, who say the proposal will protect children from life-altering medical procedures, and opponents, who say it will only harm transgender youths’ mental health.

The full Senate Medical Affairs Committee — made up of 11 Republicans, five Democrats and one former Democrat who is now the lone Statehouse Independent — must still give its approval before the Senate can debate the bill on the floor. Lawmakers advanced a similar proposal to the same committee last year, but it was too late in the session for consideration.

Under the legislation, a doctor who broke the ban could potentially lose their medical license or face lawsuits, either from the parents of minors or minors themselves after they turn 18. It also requires teachers and school administrators to contact a student’s parent if the student asked to be referred to by a different name or set of pronouns while at school.

Opposing views

Transgender people and activists testified that going through puberty for a child’s biological sex rather than the one with which they identify can cause depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. And more than a dozen major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, support the use of gender-transition hormones and puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. But with or without a law banning it, no doctors in the state perform gender-transition surgeries on anyone under the age of 18.

Chase Glenn, a transgender man, told lawmakers he experienced depression “that at times dipped into very dark places” during puberty. Counseling helped some, but it wasn’t until he started hormone-replacement therapy in his 30s that his mental health improved, he said. Already, transgender people face higher rates of these mental health issues than their peers, according to a national survey by LGBTQ nonprofit The Trevor Project.

“To know that the young people of South Carolina have access to the care that I needed at their age but that it now may be taken away from them, in my mind, is a crime,” said Glenn, who leads the Charleston-based Alliance for Full Acceptance nonprofit.

Supporters of the bill point to what they say are potentially irreversible side effects of delaying puberty and using other hormones. Children don’t know enough to determine whether their gender is truly different from their biological sex and should not be allowed to undergo medical procedures, proponents argue.

“Kids do not need their development interrupted,” said Miriam Grossman, a New York-based psychiatrist and author who travels the country speaking in favor of similar bans.

What’s next

The House, with its Republican supermajority, swiftly passed the bill last month. But senators have more procedural tools at their disposal to hold up legislation, making passage less certain.

Issues raised by Democrats on the Senate panel were much the same as those in the House. Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto argued the bill would take away parents’ rights to make medical decisions on behalf of their children and doctors’ rights to heed the advice of the country’s largest medical associations.

But most of the friction in the House came from in-fighting among Republicans over proposed penalties and the extra burden the reporting requirements put on teachers.

Should the Senate take up and pass the bill, it would expand on existing law that bans the Medical University of South Carolina from using state funds on “furthering gender transition” for children under the age of 16. Within months of the directive, which lawmakers passed as part of the budget debate in 2022, MUSC stopped hormonal treatments to transgender patients at its pediatric clinic.