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Legislatures Try to Bar Gender Affirming Care for Minors
Vanderbilt University has proven itself to be corrupt and greedy regarding gender treatment for minors. Most recently, they bragged about profits from these procedures and their efforts to force staff to participate. And the Tennessee legislature responded through a letter:
The letter comes after videos on social media of a Vanderbilt doctor describing the surgeries as a ‘huge money maker’ for the hospital went viral. Another video shows a staff member saying there would be ‘consequences’ for employees who decline to participate in these mutilative surgeries.
‘While those 18-years and older are recognized as legal adults and free to make decisions in their best interest, it is an egregious error of judgment that an institution as highly respected as Vanderbilt would condone (and promote) harmful and irreversible procedures for minor children in the name of profit,’ the letter said.
[ Rep. Jason] Zachary also reiterated that Vanderbilt and its affiliates should honor its employees’ religious and conscientious objections to opt out of performing certain surgeries and procedures.
Since there are multiple definitions of “gender affirming care,” I’ve included this one for your review:
The Office of Population Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines gender affirming care gender affirming care as ‘an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people. For transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the healthcare system.’ Gender-affirming care is evidence-based medicine supported by many prestigious medical organizations, and study after study shows that gender-affirming care reduces depression and suicide among transgender youth. ACP and other leading medical organizations have condemned efforts to criminalize gender-affirming care and any care that interferes with the physician-patient relationship.
Don’t you feel reassured now? Of course, much of this definition is distorted and misleading regarding science and the facts.
Other state legislatures are beginning to realize that they can use the power of the purse to stop these radical procedures in publicly funded facilities. Under pressure from the Oklahoma state legislature, threatening to block as much as $108.5 million in federal funds, the University of Oklahoma responded:
Legislators made discontinuing ‘gender reassignment medical treatment’ for children under 18 a stipulation for the medical facilities to receive funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The act allocated about $39.4 million for a children’s behavioral health hospital in Oklahoma City.
The bill passed this past Friday and is awaiting Gov. Kevin Stitt’s signature.
The state legislatures that have been working on legislation include Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Florida, Louisiana, Idaho, Utah, and Mississippi. They have seen various levels of success in the process; some bills have died in committee, been vetoed, or voted down.
Many medical organizations support these procedures, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. But there are plenty of other advocates:
Ultimately, ‘protecting’ trans youth requires allowing them to access medical care that permits them to live according to their own definitions of themselves, rather than the definitions ascribed to them by politicians whose goal is not protection, but suppression of children whose identities threaten their worldview. Perhaps lawmakers will one day realize this. But for now, the issue of gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth remains a heated battleground in the culture war, with the rights of thousands of children once again subject to political will.
The irony of this statement is that the Harvard Business Review believes that children are capable of “living according to the definitions of themselves,” but they must be protected from ignorant politicians.
Never wanting to miss an opportunity to interfere with states’ rights, the Department of Justice has threatened to take action:
In a letter to all state attorneys general, sent on Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that state laws preventing trans minors from accessing gender-affirming care — by blocking parents or guardians from following a medical professional’s advice, as states like Texas and Arkansas have attempted — may infringe on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
‘It’s probably the most powerful and progressive step we’ve seen on transgender rights ever from the federal government, at least today,’ said Ezra Ishmael Young, who teaches constitutional law at Cornell Law School.
* * * *
My response to the state legislatures that are taking action against gender affirming practices is that they will face an uphill battle, but I think it’s worth it. Those of us who live in states with Republican-majority legislatures must let them know that they have a duty to our citizens—parents and children alike—to fight this abomination of practices. The medical community has lost its mind and its ethics; the schools are a disgrace; even some of our religious organizations have collapsed under the social pressures to comply.
Let’s hope that more legislatures fight to submit these bills, multiple times if need be.
Who else will protect the children?
[photo courtesy of unsplash.com]
Published in Healthcare
Thank you, Susan. I continue to believe that the so-called “trans” movement, the gender-identity movement, is the most important utterly stupid progressive obsession to come down the pike in a long time. For all its incoherent narcissism, it uses confused young girls as cannon fodder and leaves broken families and bodies in its wake. The more people know about it, the better.
Recommended (yet again): Abigail Shrier’s excellent book Irreversible Damage, and Helen Joyce’s similarly terrific Trans.
Thanks so much, Hank. I haven’t read Joyce’s book, but Shrier’s was indeed excellent. Sometimes I feel as if I can expose myself to only so much of this nightmare, and am so relieved to read about positive steps.
By the way, there are those who say it’s not acceptable to state legislatures to take these steps, including the DOJ as you could see from the OP. I dont know if the DOJ will act against the states, or if the DOJ was bluffing.
“Trans” people are deeply delusional. “Trans” minors generally affirm “cis” sexuality if allowed to develop normally. The best thing we as a society could do for these unfortunate victims of a pernicious fad would be to give them regular counseling and therapy. Those few who fail to correct can do as they please when adults.
Could a state make it illegal to promote child
affirmationmutilation? Is there a first amendment right to be a groomer??I wonder if you’ve seen the new law passed in California, and signed by Newsom. It’s horrifying as a parent of girls to think how precarious their passage into womanhood is with all these toxic ideas about gender threatening to undermine their sense of self. And then there’s California making it even worse by extending the threat beyond the borders of your own state, no matter how protective its laws are.
Reading the California law made me seek out the definition of gender affirming care that it applied, since obviously it’s conveniently not defined in the text of the law itself. Here’s what I found in the California Welfare and Institutions Code 16010:
Note that the definition relies on the patient to define and identify her own diagnosis and treatment. I’ve just been dealing with serious medical issues in my family and the medical staff was amazing at analyzing and correcting an actual medical problem that the patient could never have done himself. But trans people are just so intellectually superior, I guess!
Also, the law can try to protect young people from harmful medical interventions, but there are so many parents who support it. Please read this account of a trans boy, written by the child’s mother, which was posted in opposition to the policies proposed in Virginia by Governor Youngkin.
I continue to be baffled why it is at all controversial for the law to object to cutting healthy body parts off of minors (or adults for that matter, but we’re focusing on minors for now).
The law would have no problem claiming “child abuse” if a doctor cut off a healthy body part off of a minor just because the minor said something like, “I don’t like that body part.” There is no logical basis to treat cutting off of a penis or a breast any differently from cutting off a leg, a toe, an arm, a finger, an ear, etc.
Administering drugs intended or designed to stunt the physical growth of a minor would (I hope, at least for any reason other than gender confusion) unquestionably be investigated as potential child abuse. Why should “gender confusion” be treated any differently from a desire to remain a child forever or any of other reasons a minor doesn’t want to grow up?
As many have noted, like many phases through which children and teenagers and young adults progress, confusion about sexuality and identity is almost always transitory. Like suicide, “gender affirming care” that includes surgery and hormone treatment is a permanent solution to a transitory problem.
It’s all child abuse. There are so many stories of the children’s regrets, of the pressures they didn’t know how to resist, including parents. It breaks my heart.
I fully agree with you, Doctor Robert. Unfortunately, far too many people don’t agree with us.
It’s almost as if no one swore a Hippocratic Oath or anything.
They have mangled it to suit their agenda. To me, this choice makes their actions criminal.
Would someone explain why this decision should not be left to the parents?
In the Progressive understanding, parents are the enemy and must not be trusted. My fond hope is that in pushing transgenderism on us Progressives will succeed in destroying, or at least substantially weakening, the public schools they have ruined.
Susan, I know you’re not on board with any of the transgender nonsense, but I think any use of the term in your title should be in quotations. Omitting the quotes lends the entire concept a legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Thank you for the informative post.
We probably agree that most decisions should be, but I can think of an exception. Children are taken away from their parents by the State for abusive behavior like starving them, giving them narcotic drugs or beating them with baseball bats. It makes sense to me to take away a child from a parent who wants to permanently disfigure the child through surgery. I’m not a lawyer but think this would fall under the heading of “child protection services.”
With a better media Matt Walsh would be Time’s Man of the Year.
Medical professionals who mutilate children for profit should be hanged.
Aye to that, and slowly.
Good point, Charlotte. But once the post is on the main feed, it’s out of my control. I will certainly think about my usage in the future. Thanks.
It’s sad the same people who think someone who’s 20 cannot buy a gun, smoke a cigarette, or drink beer, but think a 5-year-old can decide to change sex based on a whim – and counseling from the school . . .
Muenchhausen parents?
Great example. Horrible situation.
I get it, but this is not much of an answer to my question.
I think that the whole trans agenda, including the surgical and hormonal mutilation and going along with the bizarre fantasies of these freaks, is a bad idea. I don’t think that we should permit it or tolerate it, whether the pervert is an adult or a child.
But most people here seem to disagree with me. Most seem to think that adults should be allowed to have themselves mutilated, because liberty or something. Well, if that’s your reasoning, then it seems to me that you should be leaving decisions about trans kids to their parents.
Of course, the parents would be making the decision for their child, not for themselves. But this is the default rule for children anyway.
I’m also losing sympathy with these perverted freaks. It’s not clear to me that it’s wrong to ridicule the ridiculous.
My impression is that this is an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement, and the idea that everyone deserves to be treated with “dignity.” No, they don’t. People acting in horrible or bizarre ways don’t deserve dignity, in my view.
Jerry,
I think there’s nothing inconsistent or irrational about society saying that we will tolerate behavior in adults that we won’t allow adults to inflict on their children. For example, I’ll tolerate alcoholism among adults, but think parents should not be allowed to make alcoholics of their children.
Put simply, I think it’s reasonable to have different standards of acceptable risk for adults and children.
H.
What about the case of abortion? Should parents be left to decide whether they can kill their baby just days before it is born?
I think all sex-reassignment surgery and giving of hormones should be banned. It has no medical basis and solves no problem and isn’t something doctors should be doing.
But if that isn’t going to happen it ought to be obvious that we need to stop it for minors, regardless of what their parents say.