In New York State, it is considered child abuse for parents to allow their kid to get a tattoo, even if the kid wants one, because tattoos are a permanent alteration to the body. But it is not considered child abuse for parents to get their kid a surgical “sex change” or “gender-affirming” surgery. Even though that involves permanent removal of body parts. And even though children sometimes later regret getting such “gender-affirming” surgery, after being pressured into it by clinics that tell their parents, “would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?” Nor is it considered child abuse to put a kid on puberty blockers, even though puberty blockers can have permanent side effects such as vision loss, according to the FDA. Puberty blockers can also lead to conditions like osteoporosis. As the New York Times notes, puberty blockers have “long-term physical effects,” and may “lead to heightened risk of debilitating fractures.”
As David Strom notes at Hot Air, “New York, home of some of the most radical gender politics in the country, also has some of the strictest laws against child mutilation. Because children are not old enough to make decisions such as getting a tattoo, even if they have their parents’ permission,” according to pediatricians quoted in the New York Times.
Yet, notes Matt Walsh, the very same progressive pediatricians who defend jailing parents when their kids get a tattoo, also defend permanently changing kids’ gender using irreversible surgery. He points out that a New York Times article “quotes an official with the American Academy of Pediatrics who says that kids don’t have the ‘agency’ to permanently alter their bodies. And yet the American Academy of Pediatrics fully endorses gender transitions for minors.”
As The Times reports:
Last month, a 10-year-old boy walked into the nurse’s office of his elementary school in Highland, N.Y., and asked for some Vaseline. He wanted to rub it onto his new tattoo — a crude rendering of his name in large block letters on the inside of his forearm.
The nurse called the police.
The boy had gotten the tattoo with his mother’s permission from a neighbor, according to local authorities. While some states have no minimum age for receiving a tattoo if a parent allows it, New York State forbids anyone younger than 18 from getting tattooed with or without parental consent. Last month, both the tattoo artist, Austin Smith, 20, who was unlicensed, and the boy’s mother, Crystal Thomas, 33, were arrested, as pictures of the boy’s arm stirred outrage across local and international news sites and social media.
As Strom notes
The rationale for the law is clear and explicit. Even if parents consent, children shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions about permanent body modifications because they are not developed enough to give actual informed consent. You can argue about the parents’ rights here–whether it is child abuse to permanently mark up a kid’s body for life, or a reasonable accommodation to varied cultural practices and not the states’ business–but allowing kids to decide on their own is off the table. Personally I am not in the “arrest parents” camp on this one.
Ironically, a representative of the American Academy of Pediatrics–an organization that fights vigorously for children to be permanently sterilized and mutilated in “gender affirming care,” is 100% against child tattoos and the loosening of laws happening in various states.
He quotes from The Times article, which says:
Yet as societal mores around tattooing shift — nearly half of all millennials have tattoos, compared with only 13 percent of the boomer generation, according to a 2015 survey by the Harris Poll — there is a wide spectrum of responses to tattoos on young people. There is no federal minimum age for tattoos, and state laws vary widely. Some mirror New York’s strict over-18 rules. Some permit tattooing with parental consent for people as young as 14 years old. About a dozen, including Ohio, West Virginia and Vermont, allow it with parental blessing and do not specify any minimum age.
It is a situation that Dr. Cora Bruener, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Washington Medical Center’s Seattle Children’s Hospital, and author of guidance on tattoos for pediatricians, issued by the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine, finds troubling.
“It is a permanent mark or a symbol you are putting on your body, and I don’t think kids under 18 have that kind of agency to make a decision,” Dr. Bruener said. “We need to look at these laws again.”
“So let’s get this straight,” says Strom:
pre-kindergarteners can begin to “socially transition” their gender, and pre-pubescent children can choose to start taking hormones to prevent puberty, teens as young as 12-14 can and should get “top surgery” to remove healthy breast tissue, and older minors should be allowed to have their genitals removed.
Because they just “know” their gender and desperately need the surgeon’s knife to affirm it. That is the current position of the American Association of Pediatrics…The AAP is all in on mutilating children. But kids under 18 don’t have the agency to get Mickey Mouse tattooed on their arm.
Despite the negative side effects of puberty blockers, and lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming” surgery, the Biden administration is enthusiastic about “gender-affirming care” for minors. In March 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a document promoting gender transitions for young people, including “puberty blockers” “during puberty”, “hormone therapy” from “early adolescence onward”, and “gender-affirming surgery” (such as removal of breasts and testicles) either in “adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence.”
Strangely, this HHS guidance document, titled “Gender Affirming Care in Young People,” was issued not by HHS agencies that have expertise in transgender issues (such as the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates drugs such as puberty blockers), but rather by the Office of Population Affairs, which deals with family planning, teenage pregnancy, and adoption. The FDA has warned that the puberty blockers used by minors in gender transitions can have dire side effects, such as brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
In Newsweek, former FDA official David Gortler expressed concern about this, and asked why the Office of Population Affairs was “even commenting on gender transition treatments….As a former senior executive FDA drug safety official, I have to wonder why my 20,000-plus former colleagues at the FDA are not speaking out after being circumvented on transgender clinical pharmacology recommendations by an obscure, obviously unqualified HHS office.”
I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request about this to HHS on behalf of this blog and the Bader Family Foundation, and HHS has now produced documents indicating that its “Gender Affirming Care” recommendations were drafted without the FDA’s input. Instead, they were posted and publicized by Child Trends, a non-profit that receives funding from progressive LGBTQ advocacy foundations to promote “social justice” (one of its funders does so to “Push Boundaries, Make Change”).
HHS seems to have said pretty much whatever Child Trends wanted it to say, rather than relying on any neutral expert at the FDA or anywhere else for what recommendations to make about medical care for gender-nonconforming youth. The documents released by HHS in response to the FOIA request don’t reflect any independent medical expertise from HHS, although it is hard to be certain because some parts of the documents are redacted by HHS, which claims they are exempt from disclosure under FOIA’s Exemption 5 (HHS appears to be relying on the deliberative-process privilege).
You can view the documents HHS released at this link: https://libertyunyiel1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HHS-FOIA-production-to-BFF-Nov-3-2022-Reprinted-PDF.pdf.
The agency’s letter enclosing the document is at this link: https://libertyunyiel1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Determination-by-HHS-on-Nov-3-2022-Response-Letter-Bader-IR1-final-11.2.2022.pdf
And the FOIA request HHS responded to is at this link: https://libertyunyiel1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/HHS-FOIA-request-about-gender-affirming-care-in-May-2022.pdf
