Plain Talk With Rob Port

Should children in North Dakota have access to surgery and other types of treatment that can change their birth gender? If a bill that will be introduced in the 2023 session of the legislature is passed, such treatments would be prohibited. State Rep. Brandon Prichard, a Republican from District 8 who is sponsoring that bill, joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss it. The bill doesn't make these treatments a crime. Rather, it allows civil lawsuits from children or their parents who feel the law was violated. Prichard said a separate bill he hopes to co-sponsor, which he expects will be introduced by Rep. Lori Vanwinkle of District 3, would provide a criminal penalty. Why both? A criminal penalty is "very reliant on the state's attorney prosecuting it." He said that "bias among prosecutors" may lead to the law not being enforced, so he wanted to provide a civil remedy. Why the need to prohibit this sort of gender-affirming treatment for children at all? Prichard spoke of a drive to "corrode the innocence