S.C. State Senators Advance Two Anti-Transgender Bills
Contact: Molly Rivera, [email protected] or (919) 438-1109
For Immediate Release: March 29, 2023
S.627 and S.623 advance to full Senate Medical Affairs Committee days ahead of Transgender Day of Visibility
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Today the South Carolina Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee approved Senate Bill 627, a bill that would ban gender-affirming health care for anyone under 18 and require educators to “out” children who are transgender to their parents, potentially before they are ready to share. Senators also advanced Senate Bill 623, a bill that interferes with the identity documents of transgender people.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT) provides gender-affirming health care, including hormone therapy, at their Columbia and Charleston health centers. Vicki Ringer, Director of Public Affairs for PPSAT, released the following statement in response to the proposed legislation:
“Gender-affirming health care is essential, life-saving care, and it is absolutely shameful and dangerous to take it away from young people in this state. Once again, state politicians are using their power to bully some of our most vulnerable neighbors and take control of their private health care decisions, using young people as political pawns in yet another immoral and irresponsible culture war. Particularly in the wake of yet another horrific gun violence tragedy at a school and just days before Transgender Day of Visibility, these bills are government overreach and callousness at its ugliest.”
International Transgender Day of Visibility is Friday, March 31.
-END-