PIERRE, S.D. (KELO.com) — A bill that would prohibit doctors from performing certain procedures on transgender youth failed in a Senate committee Monday.
The Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted to kill the legislation in a 5-2 vote.
Critics of House Bill 1057 said it would take away parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s care. Carl Petersen helped organize a protest at the Capitol that opposed the bill.
“They decided that maybe parents have rights; maybe doctors have rights,” Petersen said, “and that’s not really a place where the state should meddle.”
State Senator Phil Jensen, a supporter of HB 1057, said opponents had painted an unfair picture of the bill.
“Frankly, I resent the bullying tactics and intolerance from those on the left,” Jensen said. “All this bill does is push the pause button.”
The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, as did the statewide chamber.
“It’s a discriminatory bill that really flags South Dakota as being not inclusive to the workforce,” Debra Owen, public policy director with the Sioux Falls chamber, said on KELO’s It’s Your Agri-Business Monday. Owen called inclusivity “fundamental to our economic development of the state.”
(Carter Woodiel, KELO.com News, Jody Heemstra, Dakota Radio Group, and Jerry Oster, WNAX, contributed to this report.)
