The following is a legislative update from Republican Representative Henry Stone of Forest City, representing portions of Emmet, Kossuth and Winnebago counties in Iowa House District 7:
This week has been a full week with debate taking place every day. I was the floor manager for 2 different bills. On Tuesday I managed HF 421. HF 421 is a bill for an act relating to the Iowa tuition grants program administered by the college student aid commission and including effective date and retroactive applicability provisions. The bill passed easily with a vote of 98-0.
On Wednesday, I managed HF 255 which is a bill for an act modifying requirements related to teacher intern license programs and licenses and authorizations issued by the board of educational examiners and establishing a temporary initial teaching license to be issued by the board of educational examiners to applicants who complete an alternative teacher certification program. HF 255 was amended and passed with a vote of 61-36.
There was a lot of important legislation passed this week. One such bill was HF 623 – Prohibition on Gender Procedures on Children. This bill prohibits transgender surgeries and harmful hormonal therapy from being used on Iowa children.
Currently, two hospital systems in Iowa perform these therapies or surgeries on children. Unity Point provides hormone therapy and puberty blockers, and UIHC provides hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and top surgery to children.
There is very limited data available on the long-term effects of this type of treatment. The few studies that have tracked long-term effects do not support the idea that this treatment lowers the rate of suicide in transgender individuals.
Under current practice these children are being allowed, or even encouraged, to make permanent decisions with life altering consequences; such as sterilization before they have been given the opportunity to grow up and learn more about themselves. This law will help give Iowa children the time to mature and grow into themselves before making such a life-altering decision.
Another important piece of legislation that passed out of the house this week is HF 597 which states Iowa’s educational standards must be age-appropriate, all educational programs must be age-appropriate, and all materials in school libraries must be age-appropriate. The bill goes on to define what age-appropriate is not and references the definitions of sex act in Code.
Until relatively recently, parents and school district decision makers, agreed on what was age-appropriate and what was not. It never occurred to most parents that they would need to check classroom material and library books for age-appropriate content.
Under this bill, a parent retains the right to expose their child to whatever books and material they feel is necessary. The bill tightens the age-appropriate definition to make sure schools are not using sexually explicit images and content.
This bill makes sure those sexually explicit books are not in schools and it gives guidance on what a district can or can’t do.
Age-appropriate does NOT include any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act as defined in Iowa code section 702.17 or section 728.1. If you would like to learn more about what specifically is in these sections of code visit the Iowa Legislative website and type in “702.17” or “728.1” into the Iowa code quick search tool or click on the links above.
