JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The ”bathroom bill” discussion, which has sparked debate across the country, reached Missouri on Tuesday as witnesses testified in front of the Senate Education Committee.

Ed Emery, R-Lamar, said his bill would require students to use the restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms in schools that correspond with their biological sex determined at birth. The law would not apply to single-stall or unisex restrooms.

Thirteen-year-old Samantha DeMichieli sat at the witness table, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail and with her hands held in front of her black blazer.

When she started to testify the bill that would require her, a transgender student from St. Louis, to use a boys restroom at school, her voice went high but didn’t waver.

For several years of her life, she said, she was a Samuel, not a Samantha. Right now, she said she felt safe at school, that she had friends who love her. That wasn’t always the case.

“At my old school, I was bullied for something, like being who I was,” she stopped, her voice caught on a sob.

When she regained her composure, she continued: “I knew that moving to Missouri would help make me feel better in knowing that I could be who I want to be.”

“Knowing that there is a change in the law saying I would have to use a different restroom is horrifying for me,” she said in connection with Emery’s bill.

During the hearing, she wasn’t the first to cry, she wasn’t the first to talk about the fears of bullying and harassment and she wasn’t the first transgender child to plead with the lawmakers to not pass the bill. A Christian legislative advocacy group, Concerned Women for America, was the only supporter of the bill testifying at the hearing.

“This is simply not forcing everyone else to agree with them, with what they think,” Emery said.

Emery said the state had never tried to address the transgender issues before, saying “gender has never been subjective until recent times.”

A similar edict in North Carolina caught the nation’s attention: In April of last year, then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed into state law a similar measure to pre-empt a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance. The resulting backlash included major corporations stopping expansions in the state and the NBA pulling its All-Star game from Charlotte.

In May, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidelines to schools on how to accommodate transgender students, saying they should be able to use restrooms and locker rooms that correlate with their gender identity. However, in August, a Texas judge put a nationwide injunction on the recommendations. In March, the Supreme Court will start hearing oral arguments for a case deciding transgender rights in schools.

During the last legislative session, Emery filed the same bill, but it never moved to the first step of being assigned to a committee for public testimony. In October, Emery was criticized for suggesting that transgenderism is a mental illness.

“How can harmful thoughts and unnatural behavior — formerly portrayed as mental illnesses — suddenly become normal behavior, even privileged by government mandates?” he said during a meeting of the Boone County Pachyderm Club, according to the Columbia Missourian.

During the Tuesday hearing, almost all of the testimony was in opposition to the bill.

Mazy Gilleylen, an 11-year-old transgender girl from Webster Groves, spoke of how she had been using girls restrooms for four years without any problems.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t want anyone to hurt me,” Gilleylen said.

Her mother, Amber, gave an account of threats and assault, which was not an uncommon story.

“She is regularly viewed and treated like some sort of monster,” Amber said, fearing for her daughter’s safety.

Another parent from Webster Groves, Kelly, spoke on behalf of her transgender son, an 11-year-old who stood next to her. She said that no one transitions his or her gender for “fun.”

“My son is not confused, he is not delusional, he is not mentally ill and he is certainly not a sexual predator,” Kelly said. “My son is a child, my son is a student, my son is a gift.”

Dr. Sharon Dunski Vermont, a pediatrician and mother of a transgender son, said that children suffer until they are allowed to transition, pointing to high rates of depression and suicide.

No one is allowed to use a restroom on a whim, she added: A child has to live as the gender he or she associates with for six months before a doctor will issue a letter saying the child may use the restroom of the opposite biological sex.

“Nobody who is not transgender is going to live as a girl or a boy if they’re not in order to get a letter to go into the girls bathroom and spy on the girls,” Vermont said.

Zuleyma Tang-Martinez, a biology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the definition of biological sex in the bill would be impossible to enforce.

“Are we going to subject children wanting to use (a) bathroom in school to blood tests?” she asked. “And genital examination before they use the bathroom?”

The gay rights advocacy group PROMO, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association and various chambers of commerce from around the state testified against the bill as well.

Concerned Women for America legislative liaison Alissa Johnson said her children, one a senior in high school and the other a fourth-grader, are intensely private.

“If they had to share a bathroom with someone of the opposite biological sex, I feel like they would be horrified and that’s probably an understatement,” Johnson said. “I really feel like they would be violated.”

When another member mentioned that the American Psychiatric Association listed “gender identity disorder” as a mental disorder, the crowd chimed in with a resounding, “No, it does not.” In 2012, the APA removed the term from its manual.

In September 2015, more than 100 students cited the same concern as Johnson when they walked out of Hillsboro High School, south of St. Louis, in protest of a transgender teen’s use of the girls locker room instead of a unisex bathroom.

The transgender teen, Lily Perry, said she spent the walkout locked in the principal’s office for fear of her safety, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

DeMichieli said using a different restroom “shuts her down in every single way.”

“I’m not in the bathroom to do anything bad,” DeMichieli said. “I’m there to wash my hands and pee.”

The Trump administration is set to lift federal protections and guidelines on transgender bathrooms that were put in place by the Obama administration, the Associated Press reported.

Thomas writes for the Joplin, Missouri Globe.