National
Review Online
Thursday,
February 16, 2023
South
Dakota conservatives are taking a well-deserved victory lap. The passage of House Bill 1080,
known as the “Help Not Harm” bill, is the culmination of a multi-year David and
Goliath battle that pitted a small cadre of committed conservative legislators
against the state Republican establishment. In the end, David persevered.
The new
law, which was signed by Governor Kristi Noem on Monday, is likely the most
aggressive set of protections for gender-confused children in the nation, and
serves as a model for other states seeking to curb the proliferation of gender
ideology in the field of children’s medicine. It centers on two key provisions:
first, a ban on effectively all medical sex changes for minors, including
puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical alterations; and second, a
private right of action that allows victims of such interventions to sue their
medical providers. Enforcement comes with real teeth, requiring state licensing
boards to revoke “any professional or occupational license or certificate held
by the healthcare professional” who violates the bill.
This was
no easy feat. As state representative Fred Deutsch, one of the champions of the
initiative, noted, the passage of Help Not Harm
“concludes the effort I began three years ago with HB1057” — an analogous bill
that died in the Republican-supermajority state senate in 2020. Despite South
Dakota’s deep-red hue, Deutsch and his compatriots have seen numerous anti-gender-ideology
bills frustrated by the influence of
powerful pharmaceutical interests and their allies in the state GOP. And for their troubles, many of
those social-conservative legislators were placed on a hit list circulated by the Republican
president pro tempore of the state senate, and consequently faced primary
challenges funded by lobbying outfits associated with Sanford Health, the
primary pharmaceutical interest in the state (which also happens to profit from
the provision of sex-change surgeries and drugs for children).
Many of
those primary challengers were endorsed by
Governor Noem herself,
who came under
scrutiny in 2021 for
her own close relationship to Sanford, following her surprise veto of a ban on
males in girls’ sports. Noem went so far as to publicly campaign with Deutsch’s
primary challenger. But the majority of the targeted social-conservative
legislators made it through their primaries and returned to the state
legislature more determined than ever to pass protections for vulnerable
children.
This
time, they had the wind at their back: The national backlash that Noem faced
for her veto of the women’s-sports bill came with growing conservative scrutiny
of South Dakota’s broader track record on the transgender issue — scrutiny that
previously reticent Republicans in the state were no doubt vividly aware of.
With that momentum, the Help Not Harm bill passed the state house by a margin
of 60 to 10 and the state senate by a vote of 30 to 4.
For
evidence of the urgency of this bill, one need only look at the horrific accounts
of what is occurring in the name of “gender-affirming care” across the country.
Just this week, amid the Missouri attorney general’s investigation of a local
youth transgender center, the sworn affidavit of a former caseworker at the
clinic detailed the
wanton, reckless, and utterly unscientific environment that its young patients —
“nearly all” of whom “presented with very serious mental health problems” —
unknowingly entered. “Despite claiming to be a place where children could
receive multidisciplinary care, the Center would not treat these mental health
issues,” the caseworker wrote. “Instead, children were automatically given
puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.” The result, in some cases, was that
“children experience[d] shocking injuries from the medication the Center
prescribed,” which were routinely ignored by the doctors who were entrusted
with their care.
Thanks
to the courageous efforts of Deutsch and his counterparts, that won’t be
happening in South Dakota anytime soon. Republican majorities in other states
would do well to follow suit.
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