A recent comment by a Montana Republican state lawmaker who sponsored legislation to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors has gone viral and drawn backlash online.

State Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, R-Billings, suggested during a floor debate that she would rather risk her daughter dying by suicide than allow her to transition. Seekins-Crowe did not say that her daughter identified as transgender, but said she was “one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years.”

"One of the big issues that we have heard today and we've talked about lately is that without surgery the risk of suicide goes way up. Well, I am one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years," Seekins-Crowe said in her remarks in March. "Someone once asked me, 'Wouldn't I just do anything to help save her?' And I really had to think and the answer was, 'No.'"

"I was not going to give into her emotional manipulation because she was incapable of making those decisions and I had to make those decisions for her," Seekins-Crowe said.

She continued, "I was not going to let her tear apart my family and I was not going to let her tear apart me because I had to be strong for her, I had to have a vision for her life when she had none, was incapable of having none."

Seekins-Crowe said that she was scared and "spent hours on the floor in prayer because I didn't know that when I woke up, if my daughter was going to be alive or not. But I knew that I had to make those right decisions for her so that she would have a precious, successful adulthood at that time."