South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has signed a bill banning sex change surgeries and experimental puberty blockers for children and teens, according to the Christian Post. House Bill 1080, also known as the ‘Help Not Harm’ bill, was passed to prevent irreversible surgeries on minors who may be struggling with their identities. The bill is the seventh in the country to pass such laws protecting youth from such medical procedures.
Kristi Noem released a statement saying, “South Dakota’s kids are our future. With this legislation, we are protecting kids from harmful, permanent medical procedures,” adding that, “I will always stand up for the next generation of South Dakotans.”
The bill has been praised by groups such as the American Principles Project (APP), whose president, Terry Schilling, said, “Noem and South Dakota legislators deserve a great deal of credit for acting to protect children in their state from this medical malpractice. The momentum for this movement fighting the transgender industry continues to grow, and we’re just getting started.” Noting the vulnerability of children and teens, Schilling warned that the “transgender industry” is rushing kids into “dangerous, life-changing procedures without fully comprehending the consequences.”
Still critics who support the irreversible surgeries for kids were outraged that children and teens would no longer be able to make permanent changes to their bodies. The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota responded to the bill saying that although it will not stop children and teens from “being trans,” it will “deny them critical support that helps struggling transgender youth grow up to become thriving transgender adults.”
The new law includes “banning puberty blockers, the administering of ‘testosterone, estrogen, or progesterone, in amounts greater than would normally be produced endogenously in a healthy individual of the same age and sex’ and surgeries that involve castration or sterilization.”
It also provides exemptions “for treatments involving a child that was ‘born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including external biological sex characteristics that are irresolvably ambiguous,’ any minor ‘diagnosed with a disorder of sexual development’ or a child that needs ‘treatment for an infection, injury, disease, or disorder that has been caused or exacerbated by any action or procedure prohibited’ by the law.
Additionally, “if a medical professional began performing sex reassignment surgeries for a minor before July 1 and it is determined that ‘immediately terminating the minor’s use of the drug or hormone would cause harm to the minor,’ then the drugs can be ‘systematically reduced’ during a period that “may not extend beyond December 31, 2023.”
Despite critics’ arguments, Kristi Noem’s attempt to protect South Dakota’s youth from undergoing irreversible surgeries at a young age will help them stay on a healthier course of life. As adults try to impress transgender ideology on vulnerable children, they take advantage of them and lead many down an irreversible path of regret and despair. In South Dakota, children and teens can longer be coaxed into making permanent changes to their bodies at their age since it is now illegal to do so.