Quote of the Day: Worst Part of Transgender Treatment

This medication is called a “gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist” and it comes in the form of monthly injections or an implant. And because it simulates the activity of this hormone, it shuts down the activity of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is this almond-sized structure in your brain, it’s one of the most primal structures we have, and it controls all the other hormonal structures in your body—your sexual development, your emotions, your fight-or-flight response, everything . . . . And I always think that if someone were to ask me, Where is it that you would look for the divine spark in each individual? I would say that it would be somewhere 'beneath the inner chamber,' which is the Greek derivation of the term hypothalamus. To shut down that system is to shut down what makes us human.

--Christopher Rufo, quoting a medical doctor from a major children’s hospital

Much has been written about the horrendous treatments performed, especially on children, by healthcare professionals. We talk about young people who are simply confused about their sexuality and manipulated by adults to make life-changing, irreversible decisions; we read stories about bodies that are mutilated, within and without, to create a false image about who or what the person is. But rarely have I seen statements about what gender mutilation does to the spirit and soul.

We are betraying ourselves and G-d when we try to literally change who and what we are. These young people seem to forget that they are more than their bodies, more than their breasts or sexual organs. And when they destroy a part of themselves that is inherent to every human being, the divine spark (as the doctor of the quotation says), they don’t become something else. Instead, they deny their very humanity.

What a tragic loss.