Second Helping with Grace & Katelyn - SC’s Anti-Trans Healthcare Bill

more Stew - Second Helpings "H: 4624

:: 00:00

Hi, it's Grace. And this is a special episode of Frogmore Stew. Since I've started this podcast, many of you have reached out to ask more about the various topics or about legislation surrounding the topics that I've covered.

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:: 00:44

How are you? It's so good to be on Frogmore Stew.

:: 00:47

Let me just start by saying this, earlier this week on Frogmore Stew, we had a guest Jessica McIntosh, who told us the story of her son, Thomas. And when we asked Jessica to be on the show, I wasn't aware that this same week there would be pretty major legislation going through Columbia that would directly affect her and her son.

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:: 01:53

This bill is H4624, and it is a bill that basically has a number of anti trans aspects

:: 02:03

We have a representative John McCravey to, uh, review the bill with us , today. McCravey, appreciate you being here.

:: 02:10

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. you know, there are a few things we do as legislators that are more important than protecting vulnerable children. One of those important legislative protections that has come to pass is to protect minors from so called gender transition procedures.

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:: 04:43

I would offer the five to six minute introduction of the bill seemed to list a host of facts and studies that proved that gender affirming care was hurting our children, and he stated that he believed this was wrong.

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:: 05:11

You were putting out a lot of stats there, so I just wanted some, some clarification. Can you repeat the thing about the FDA as it relates to brain damage?

:: 05:21

Yes, uh, uh, the FDA has warned that these drugs, the puberty blockers, uh, carry a risk of causing, uh, that pseudotumor cerebri that I mentioned, uh, that has, uh, that's a severe disease. Uh, it's something that, that nobody wants.

:: 05:41

And then the 60 percent regret rate that you mentioned, what was the source of that?

:: 05:48

I believe there are several studies out there, I've reviewed a lot of them.

:: 05:52

The one that you were quoting.

:: 05:53

Well, I can't, I'll, I'll give it to you after this hearing, I'll be glad to go find it for you.

:: 05:58

So that 60 percent regretting quote, you don't have the source for that?

:: 06:03

I believe, I believe the 60 Minutes, uh, program talked about that.

:: 06:07

So your source is 60 Minutes?

:: 06:09

Well, I'm not sure if that was the study I read, but I know that there was at least one or two that say 60%.

:: 06:20

But I'm just being, for, for clarification, you said it was a fact, and you, but you don't have the source for that fact?

:: 06:26

Well, it's a fact that there are studies that show that.

:: 06:29

But you don't have those studies that, that you

:: 06:39

This bill essentially makes providing gender affirming care to minors illegal, regardless of who those individuals are, their parents, guardians, doctor's approval mental health providers, believing that it's in the best interest of the minors.

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:: 07:05

There are so many things in what you just said. For example, gender affirming care, what does that mean? When I first heard that term, I just thought it meant what people call puberty blockers or reassignment surgery. But that's not actually what it is, right? It's something much more than that.

:: 07:27

Yeah. It's a holistic approach to someone's identity. When they say gender affirming care, they're talking about mental health. They're talking about hormones. There's doctor and medical ongoing checks, but that mental health component, you know, that, that's a critical part of what we are talking about when we speak about gender affirming care.

:: 07:47

And there's a lot of misconceptions about gender affirming care. So I really wanted to do a little myth busting here today. Um, number one, there is no gender confirmation surgery occurring here in minors in South Carolina. None.

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:: 09:09

Which sort of leads me into the second thing that I want to talk about in this bill, and that is that although throughout this process in the last two and a half weeks, we've softened the language through an amendment process. there are serious parameters for mental health providers to provide services to children who are experiencing gender dysphoria in their parents. And it creates a lot of doubt and ambiguity as to what a service provider is actually allowed to talk to both the parents and the child and I think that's really dangerous.

:: 09:42

For example, a therapist, where is the line between therapy for a child and gender affirming care? What's the difference?

:: 09:53

Anyone who is under the age of 18 needs to have parental consent to be speaking to a mental health professional. what that mental health professional talks about with the child most often is not fully disclosed to the parent. But there are themes that mental health professional will bring back to the parent. And I am sure that gender becomes one of those things.

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:: 10:48

As someone who runs support groups, I have seen the harm that the denial of care and acceptance can cause. I have had teens come to me with self harm wounds and had to intervene, and it's because of their parents denying them access and care. If we further isolate these teens by banning affirmative care across the states, we will be placing at least 3, 700 self identified transgender teens in the exact same high emotion positions that lead to these self harm events.

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:: 11:44

And so essentially our legislature is saying to the parents of 3, 700 trans kids in South Carolina that they are not allowed to publicly acknowledge their child's true self. We're not going to acknowledge that exists. And we're not going to allow medical professionals to say that it exists.

:: 12:04

I think that this is the other component of it all. You are now putting professionals in a place where it is counter to what they are being taught and It's a moral conflict. And it's not just a moral conflict for the doctors and the mental health professionals. The third thing about this bill is that It requires school staff to out any children if the minor's perception of his or her gender is inconsistent with his or her sex.

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:: 13:05

The way that this bill is written , assumes that teachers aren't going to tell parents anything. This implies that teachers don't know how to handle a variety of situations with kids. And, by the way, teachers know everything. They overhear conversations, just like you said, Katelyn. Kids go to school and tell their teachers literally everything that goes on at home. This creates more issues than it solves

:: 13:40

It puts pressure on teachers to be a part of something that they shouldn't necessarily be a part of.

:: 14:20

Yeah, for sure.

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So finally, this bill, it's been talked about quite a bit in the news as a bill that affects only gender affirming care for minors. But there's one incredibly important line that it takes away the ability for transgender adults under 26 to fill their prescriptions using Medicaid. And this is an important point because it's not being discussed and they're trying to slip it through. this would be cost prohibitive for a number of young people to be able to go through gender affirming care once they become adults. And consenting adults, for that matter.

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Why do you think, Katelyn, that this one bill that affects 3, 700 kids and their parents is such a priority?

:: 15:06

There are two reasons, in my opinion. The first is that it's a coordinated movement across the United States. We are seeing similar legislation introduced all over the country nearly simultaneously, and this is due to that influence of national level politics on local politics. We haven't talked about the process yet of the bill, but when the bill was in subcommittee, 48 people testified on January 10th.

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:: 16:33

I just don't understand how they expect this to turn out. They essentially go after a topic that not a lot of people know or understand and then they're using words and language to, make people feel like it's immoral, like it's wrong, like it's parents that are manipulating their children, that it's teachers that are indoctrinating kids at school. But the reality is that it's 3, 700 kids and their parents, and no match to this major machine nationally that is moving against them.

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Democracy is in danger when there's doubt. And doubt has been a thread through so much of what has happened in the last 20 years in the United States. And we are at what I would say is the climax of what doubt has produced in democracy in the United states and these bills are a product of fear and doubt that institutions in our country have our best interest at heart.

:: 17:42

I think you're so spot on, Katelyn. When did we stop trusting doctors? When did we stop trusting teachers?

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:: 18:27

A perfect example in the testimonies of this is that children are going to receive this care without parental consent or mental health advice.

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:: 19:30

Our legislature no longer trusts medical professionals that are considered mainstream medical professionals. That has been clear from testimony over and over that we have watched in Columbia for the last couple of years.

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One of the most important things that we as a community need to do around this issue is talk about it. And I think that part of the reason that I really loved having Jessica on this week is because people aren't talking about really important things not because they don't care and not because they don't want to know, but I think a lot of people don't talk about things because they're afraid to use the wrong language.

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:: 21:23

I agree. There's a lot of complications around putting boxes around other people's identification, but you should be open and be willing to be educated daily.

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:: 22:11

That's part of change And that adds another layer of change.

:: 22:15

This has been an incredible conversation today and I think we'd be remiss if we didn't just wrap it up as to where the bill is now. If you turned on the TV or read the Post and Courier or the State, you know that there was an incredible amount of discussion and regardless of all of that discussion, it did pass the House,

:: 22:38

Right? Party lines. Yep.

:: 22:40

Which means that it does move on to the Senate. To your point earlier, Grace, about the fact that we just need to keep talking about this.

:: 23:00

We've had a lot of heavy conversation today and I thought we could end with something fun or light, because I feel like we have a lot of heavy conversations ahead of us in the coming months. So do you have a thought of the day, Katelyn?

:: 23:16

I'm going to stay a little heavy only because I am interested in global warming architecture. And the reason why is because my hometown, Booth Bay Harbor, Maine, dealt with the storm from last week, I mean it was the whole East Coast was dealing with it.

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:: 24:24

Wow. So I had this crazy thing happen today and I was driving in a part of town that has a lot of railroad tracks. I suddenly developed this really weird fear of tracks

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[00:24:51] And it's because two weeks ago, I saw news story about this guy that got hit by a train. He was just driving about over some railroad tracks and I guess the gate didn't come down and his car was hit by a train. it's so buried in my brain. And I realized that one story that I saw multiple weeks ago is now embedded in my brain that I had a real reaction in real life.

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