North Dakota
North Dakota Senate votes down bill on parents' access to minor's medical exam rooms
BISMARCK — The North Dakota Senate struck down a bill on Thursday regarding parent or guardian access to the medical examination room of minors after an extensive and emotional floor debate.
House Bill 1450 would have clarified that a parent or guardian had “full and complete access” to the examination room of a minor in their care, and would have required health care facilities to post this information prominently for parents and guardians to see.
The bill would also have required that a health care provider give written notice to the parent or guardian of a minor before they ask the minor any questions. The notice would have informed parents and guardians of their right, and the minor’s right, to opt out of questions; whether the minor’s answers to questions will be shared with other people or recorded in any capacity; and a list of the topics of the questions that may be asked.
HB1450’s primary sponsor, Rep. SuAnn Olson, R-Baldwin, said a parent or guardian’s right to be in a medical examination room with their child already exists, but the bill sought to clarify it and ensured that health care providers informed parents and guardians of the right.
The measure garnered extensive opposition testimony in the Senate Human Services Committee from medical professionals, including representatives from Central Dakota Forensic Nurse Examiners, Rolette County Public Health, the North Dakota Hospital Association and the North Dakota Medical Association.
They said they were concerned the bill would “reinforce the power dynamics that perpetuate abuses,” and potentially conflict with North Dakota laws that allow minors to consent to their own health care in limited circumstances, such as instances of sexual assault, or when consent is implied due to a life-threatening situation that requires emergency examination and treatment.
According to the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused by the age of 18 and of those, over 60% will be abused by a family member.
“How can a child be honest if the person sitting next to them may be the biggest part of the problem?” The bill’s carrier Sen. Judy Lee, R-West Fargo, said. “Passing this bill will cripple the ability of health care providers to do what is right for their child and adolescent patients.”
The discussion on the Senate floor, which took over an hour, brought multiple senators to tears and prompted some to allude to their own experiences with abuse at home that they said would have prevented them from answering questions from medical professionals honestly had a parent or guardian been in the medical examination room.
“I stood on the doorstep in one of my early campaigns, I heard a child crying loudly in the house. Then I heard a male voice shout, ‘You quit crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,’” Sen. Dick Dever, R-Bismarck, said on the floor of the Senate.
“I knocked on the door. Immediately I heard only silence. I knocked again, there was no answer. Those sounds were familiar from my own childhood. I don’t know whether I am heaven-bound because my mother shared the love of Christ with my three brothers and me or because my father beat the hell out of us. Both were true … If I had been questioned in this kind of circumstance (in a medical examination room), my responses would have been different with my father in the room than without him.”
Tanner Ecker / The Bismarck Tribune
The bill does specify that it does not apply to legally emancipated minors or in instances of suspected physical or sexual abuse when a provider has documented the concern and notified the appropriate authorities. However, Sen. Kristin Roers, R-Fargo, said this is not specific enough and leaves a grey area for medical professionals to have to navigate.
“I am a mandated reporter as a nurse,” Roers said. “When do we consider something a suspected case of abuse? Is it when I saw a bruise, or once I’ve had a chance to find out that it wasn’t from falling off the jungle gym, but because their dad hit them? When? Where’s the line? This doesn’t define that. How can I ask the questions and actually get at the root of that?”
“I was one of those girls who was abused,” she continued. “Not by my parents, really, and I never told my parents until I was an adult. And I just wonder, would I be in a different situation if someone had asked me the right questions? I never would have answered them correctly if my parents were in the room. But would I have, if I had been there alone?”
Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, said she respected those who shared their stories in the chamber but, “sometimes a sad story makes for bad law.”
She said there were stories on both sides of the issue and shared a story she said was from a constituent about their 12-year-old daughter being “pushed” by a nurse practitioner to get on the birth control pill during a sports physical. She said the nurse practitioner had attempted to speak with her constituent’s daughter privately but the constituent refused to let them, and when the nurse practitioner continued to push on the topic of birth control, the constituent took their daughter and left the medical examination.
“The reason these bills are before us today is because of vaccinations,” Myrdal said. “Should a child be vaccinated without a parent’s permission? I certainly don’t think so. And also the transgender issue — I mean let’s be honest here, that’s why this bill is before us — where we read stories of teachers or … health providers taking a child and agreeing to help them (transition) and not tell their parents.”
Other senators who spoke in support of the bill said parents were responsible for the protection of their children and brought up stories about children being asked questions that they felt were inappropriate by medical professionals during examinations and about physicians abusing children under the guise of medical examinations.
Sen. Kent Weston, R-Sarles, read from a handout of stories that he said happened to North Dakota legislators.
“’My 13-year-old son went for a sports physical. The doctor asked him if he was sexually active and offered him condoms. What does that have to do with playing basketball?’” Weston said. “This was a personal friend of mine that, while she was 17, (she said) ‘While I was lying on the exam table, my doctor gave me — a teenager at the time — advice as what best placement for my hips during sex (was).’”
Weston said 99% of doctors were “fantastic” and that he was not bashing doctors, but that in all professions there were good and bad people. He said that the fundamental right belongs to the parents.
“We need to give parental rights and then get after the bad actors,” Weston said. “That’s how we deal with this.”
Multiple senators said the bill had them conflicted about which way to vote. An amendment was offered on the floor that some said would have moved the bill “in the right direction” but it was voted down in a narrow 26-21 vote.
The bill previously passed the House with a 72-15 vote but came out of the Senate Human Services Committee without a recommendation. The Senate voted the bill down in a 29-18 vote.
Today in History revisits the Tuesday, December 29. 1959 edition of the Grand Forks Herald and highlights a story on the UND Hockey team being names North Dakota team of the year.
The University of North Dakota hockey team was named “Team of the Year” after winning the NCAA Championship in a 4-3 overtime victory over Michigan State. Forward Reg Morelli was voted the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Runner-up honors went to the Bismarck High basketball team for winning its third straight Class A title.
Sioux Ice Champs N. D. Team Of Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (as published by the Grand Forks Herald on Dec. 29, 1959)
North Dakota hockey stock reached a peak early in 1959 when the University sextet captured the NCAA championship with a 4-3 overtime victory over Michigan State.
The feat earned the Sioux icemen the accolade of “team of the year” in the annual Associated Press poll of sports editors and sports directors.
Runner-up honors in the balloting went to the Bismarck high school basketball team, which won its third straight Class A high school title.
The St. Mary’s high school football team, which came from no- where to win the Class A grid crown, won third place.
The University hockey team had taken western championship for the first time the year before, and finished second to Denver in the 1957-58 NCAA tournament.
As the 1958-59 campaign rolled around there were many problems to be solved if the Sioux were to maintain their position atop the college hockey world.
One by one the questions were resolved, and on March 14, at Troy, N. Y., North Dakota went into overtime to cop the coveted NCAA title.
Tremendous spirit marked the Sioux climb to the top. The North Dakota team won four games during the season in overtime, including two in the NCAA meet.
Members of the championship team included George Gratton and Bob Peabody, goalies; Ralph Lyndon, Julian Butherta, Pete Gaze- ly and Bob Began on defense; and Jerry Walford, Stan Paschke, Guy LaFrance, Art Miller, Ed Thomlinson, Joe Poole, Les Merrifield, Ron King, Bart Larson, Bernie Haley, Garth Perry and Reg Morelli, forwards.
Morelli Voted Most Valuable
Morelli was voted most valuable player in the NCAA tourney. Morelli and Thomlinson were on the first team and Lyndon and Poole on the tournament’s second team.
The Bismarck basketball feat of three straight state championships tied a record set by Fargo in 1922- 23-24. The Demons had an overall 21-3 record, averaged 61.6 points per game and held opponents to 49.3 per tilt on the season.
Starters were Ron Carlson and Bob Smith at forward, Rod Tjaden at center and Art Winter and Rich Olthoff at guards.
Carlson and Winter were all-west choices.
Here are “team of the year” choices, points in parenthesis:
- UND hockey (37)
- Bismarck high basketball (24)
- St. Mary’s high football (16)
- Bottineau high basketball (11)
- Valley City Teachers basket- ball (10)
- Williston high wrestling (5)
- Grand Forks Legion baseball (2)
- Shanley high football (1)
- NDAC football (1).
Our newsroom occasionally reports stories under a byline of “staff.” Often, the “staff” byline is used when rewriting basic news briefs that originate from official sources, such as a city press release about a road closure, and which require little or no reporting. At times, this byline is used when a news story includes numerous authors or when the story is formed by aggregating previously reported news from various sources. If outside sources are used, it is noted within the story.
A storm bearing down on the Great Lakes and New England is expected to bring rain, snow, and high winds over the next few days.
A narrow band from Fargo, North Dakota south to approximately Mason City, Iowa is under a blizzard warning ahead of the storm. That includes parts of of both states as well as parts of Minnesota. Winds in the affected areas are forecast to reach 45 miles per hour and, paired with an expected 3 to 8 inches of snow, are expected to create whiteout conditions through the start of the week.
Michigan’s upper peninsula is under a blizzard warning as well. There, snowfall is expected to be between 9 inches and 2 feet, and winds are expected to reach as high as 60 miles per hour, ABC News reports.
The National Weather Service has issued winter weather advisories for parts of the northeast, from the Scranton, Pennsylvania up through Burlington, Vermont and Portland, Maine. Freezing rain is expected in that area on Sunday and Monday.
Buffalo and Jamestown, New York, are also both under flood watches from Sunday afternoon until Monday afternoon.
Back in the Great Lakes region, both Cleveland and Detroit are bracing for high winds. Forecasters expect the cities will see gusts of up to 60 miles per hour on Sunday night through early Tuesday morning.
In the upper midwest, both Minneapolis and Green Bay are forecast to see between 5 to 9 inches of snow. A level 1 of 5 severe storm threat exists in a stretch from northern Indiana south into Missouri. That band includes Indianapolis, St Louis, Louisville, and Nashville. The affected region will be subject to high speed, damaging wind gusts, according to Fox Weather.
The storm began dropping snow on Sioux Falls and Fargo early on Sunday morning, and will continue to sweep east across the northern sections of the U.S. The midwest will begin to see storm conditions on Sunday afternoon, and the northeast will be affected shortly thereafter.
Road travelers in the affected regions should be wary. Parts of the I-95 corridor between Philadelphia and Boston may be made treacherous by freezing rain around 5 pm on Sunday night.
Forecasters believe that the storm system will clear by Monday night, though lake-effect snow is likely to follow in its wake for Great Lakes communities. That snow will likely continue into Tuesday and potentially Wednesday.
In northern New England, wintry precipitation may produce up to a quarter of an inch of ice in the area. While the interior northeast is expected to receive some lake-effect snow as well, forecasters believe snowfall in the region will be lighter.
The storm comes on the heels of another winter weather system that swept across the northeast earlier this week, dropping snow on New York and New Jersey and forcing thousands of flights to be either cancelled or delayed.
LINCOLN, N.D. (KFYR) – Lincoln got its very own cat cafe last week.
Ashley Kneavel learned about cat cafes while visiting another state.
“I fell in love with the concept and wanted to bring something like that to North Dakota,” said Kneavel.
And so with the help of Furry Friends Rockin’ Rescue director Julie Schirado, she got to work.
“About a year ago, I think it was, we started building this together,” said Kneavel.
Furry Friends’ role in the operation? Providing the cats. All of them are pre-vetted, meaning they are spayed and neutered and fully vaccinated.
Meaning they’re also ready for adoption.
“Instead of them sitting at a shop, they get to sit in an atmosphere that’s closely resembled to a home,” said Kneavel.
The cafe has already had three of its four-legged residents adopted.
“It’s a great thing to see when somebody comes in and connects with them on a deep level and takes them home,” said Kneavel. “It’s just… I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s just very rewarding.”
One of her goals in the future is to install a drive-thru window.
To learn how to adopt a furry pal from the cafe, or how to book a visit, click here.
Copyright 2025 KFYR. All rights reserved.
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