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It has been a busy and rewarding couple of weeks here in South Dakota (despite the frigid weather we love so much!), so I want to share a quick update on what’s been going in South Dakota and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and NCTE Action Fund’s work on the ground here.
As you know, the South Dakota legislature introduced a bill that would make it a Class 4 felony to provide medical treatment to support gender transition for any transgender minor. This reckless piece of legislation, known as HB 1057, would have put doctors in jail simply for providing accepted medical standards of care to young people trying to live as their authentic selves.
Thanks to the support of some amazing parents, trans youth, advocates, and organizations we were able to defeat this bill!
Hopefully this sends a message to state legislators across the country that being a kid is hard enough and denying best-practice medical care to transgender youth would be life-threatening.
Here are just a few of the highlights of NCTE and the NCTE Action Fund’s work from this important week of action:
- Sponsored a bus from Sioux Falls to Pierre to bring nearly 50 trans youth, parents, and supporters to join a rally of more than 100 South Dakotans opposing HB1057 at the capitol.
- Rallied in Sioux Falls with more than 300 trans kids and teens, parents, and supporters.
- Mobilized dozens of people of faith to write and call Senators, demanding their opposition to the bill, including pastors and church leaders from Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and UCC denominations.
- Recruited 30 volunteers in South Dakota who made calls to supporters in key districts encouraging them to contact their senator in opposition to the bill.
- Alerted medical professionals about the proposed legislation so they could stand with their patients in opposition to the bill.
- Trained youth and faith leaders to talk directly with their Senators and instigated these conversations to occur before the Senate committee vote which determined whether the bill would advance or not.
Want to see more on the ground action? Check out some photos from the fight on our Facebook page now!
Stay tuned as there is more work to be done and more fights ahead!
Damon Hainline
NCTE/NCTE Action Fund Field Organizer
Pronouns: Damon, or they/them
P.S. This is an incredible win, but there are at least 40 more anti-trans bills that still need to be defeated. And there will be more. NCTE will organize again and again in order to these anti-trans actions. Click here to support this work.
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