Republican legislators in South Carolina would have you believe gender-affirming care is the greatest threat facing our children. Why else would they open the 2024 legislative session by passing a bill that will ban this life-saving, evidence-based care?

Gender-affirming care is not a threat at all, actually. But banning it is. As a mom, a pediatrician, and founder of Their Future PAC, our nation’s first Political Action Committee dedicated to building a brighter future for our children, I can tell you, with confidence, our children face a multitude of actual threats. And they need help, not bullying, from our legislators.

Gun violence, climate change, attacks on public education, hunger, homelessness, and a mental health crisis, are just a few of the threats our youngest generation faces. Serious people, who actually care about children, understand this. Ask a teacher who buys their own school supplies while politicians call them groomers. Ask a trauma surgeon who wears blood-soaked scrubs from a child with bullet holes while legislators work to pass dangerous gun laws like permitless carry. Ask a parent who can’t afford their child’s asthma inhalers while our Governor refuses to expand Medicaid, ask a school-based mental health professional who can’t meet the needs of their student body, while legislators ignore our youth mental health crisis. The moment for children in this country has never been more urgent. The threats they face are as numerous as they are profound. But you would never know it by watching our SC Republican supermajority.

Gender-affirming care refers to medical, psychological, and social support that helps individuals align their gender expression with their gender identity, promoting a sense of authenticity and well-being. It is supported by all major medical organizations. Banning it will harm vulnerable transgender youth and is a direct affront to parents’ rights. The Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, put it best when he said (after vetoing a gender-affirming care ban) “Were I to sign House Bill 68, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child, than the two people that love that child the most, the parents.”

in session after session in the South Carolina State House I have watched Republicans legislate with hate, ignorance, misogyny, and frankly, stupidity. They listen to male preachers when they should be listening to women and OB/GYNs. They fly in gun lobbyists from Virginia while ignoring physicians, police chiefs and gun violence survivors. And now they are listening to national extremist political organizations while ignoring testimony from child health and mental health experts, and transgender youth and their families. Some of them do it because they want to score political points in their gerrymandered districts. Some of them do it because they believe God sent them here to “protect” children, specifically transgender children. Protect them from who, or what, I’m not sure. Some of them do it simply because their party told them to. All of them do it because they have no problem playing politics with our kids.

It has to stop. These games hurt real families and children in South Carolina and sadly, this is happening all across the country. Meanwhile, our kids actually need their help. They need better gun laws, more affordable healthcare, access to mental health services, food security, and quality public education.

Republicans aren’t protecting kids. They are playing a cynical game. A cynical game that hurts vulnerable children while ignoring the threats facing all of our children. We must hold them accountable, call them out and most importantly, vote them out.

Gender-affirming care is not a threat to our kids, but the Republican supermajority certainly is.

Until the kids are alright,

Dr. Annie Andrews.

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