By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri’s legislative session ends in two weeks in Jefferson City with some high-profile legislation still hanging in the balance.
One, is an attempt to regulate transgender health care for minors.
A northwest Missouri freshmen state representative has jumped right into the middle of the controversial issue.
Rep. Mazzie Boyd of Hamilton co-sponsors legislation that would prohibit minors from receiving gender-transition medical care without parental consent. Boyd, a Republican, says her stance has been informed by those who underwent such procedures only to change their minds.
“It almost makes me want to bawl my eyes out, talking to some of my friends, that now become my friends over this and they never will be able to have children. They’re with life-long consequence of their body hurting and they’re only at this point 18 or 19, but they were making these decisions at 14 and 15,” Boyd tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Boyd says too much is unknown about puberty blockers and gender-transition surgery to refer to such treatment as gender-affirming.
“On the Mayo Clinic and even on the St. Louis gender clinic, it’s really interesting. If you look at the side effects, it will say, side effects yet not known,” according to Boyd. “Mayo Clinic says loss of fertility. These are serious things that I don’t believe a 13 or 14 year old should ever be affirmed in, because you have no idea. What I thought at 13 and what I think now at almost 25 are completely different things.”
Other legislation would prohibit transgender youth from participating in girls’ sports.
Freshman state Rep. Jeff Farnan of Stanberry does not want students born as boys to play on a girls’ team, no matter how few might be affected.
“But the people that it does, it’s not fair to them,” Farnan tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “If a biological male is playing on a woman’s team, not only does it take the place of another biological woman that could be playing, it gives that person an unfair advantage, or that team an unfair advantage, by having a biological male play on that team.”
Time is running out this legislative session. Lawmakers wrap up work in Jefferson City on the 12th.