Democrats think kids aren’t mature enough to get a tattoo, and that minors aren’t mature enough to be tried in adult court for committing murder even when they are 16 or 17, but that kids are mature enough to run away from home and get a sex change that could lead to permanent amputation of body parts.
A recently-passed Washington State bill would allow kids to be temporarily concealed from their parents if the kids allegedly are seeking “gender-affirming treatment.” Gender-affirming treatment includes things such as sex-change surgery and “mastectomies.” The governor is expected to sign it into law soon.
Under recently passed Senate Bill 5599, shelters can contact the State Department of Children, Youth, and Families instead of parents when minors allegedly seek reproductive health services or gender-affirming care.
Democratic State Rep. Tana Senn lauded the bill’s passage, saying she supports children who believe they belong in a different body than they were born.
“I am saying tonight to them that I see you, that I affirm you, that I hear you, that I love you. With this bill’s passage, we say that Washington State does too.”
The bill passed along party lines, over Republican opposition. State Senate Republican Leader John Braun said the legislation wrongly “clears the way” for kids to “game the system” by taking away parents’ constitutional right to the custody of their children.
“The only thing SB 5599 would do is cause harm by driving a wedge between vulnerable kids and their parents, at a time when a teen lacks the perception and judgment to make critical life-altering decisions. A parent may not even know why the child ran away and could involve law enforcement or other groups in a desperate search… all the while going through an unnecessary emotional nightmare, imagining the worst about what might have happened.”
Braun also noted that Democrats themselves claim that kids’ brains are not fully developed until they are at least 22 years of age, which means Democrats are allowing minors to make a life-altering decision that they may someday regret without any parental input. “Right now, [Democrats] are sponsoring a juvenile offender sentencing bill based on ‘the expansive body of scientific research on brain development, which shows that adolescents’ perception, judgment, and decision-making skills differ significantly from that of adults,'” Braun observed.
Ironically, Washington State Democrats are trying to get rid of life without parole for murderers below age 22, based on their supposedly incomplete brain development before age 25, even as they claim minors’ brains are fully developed enough to choose life-altering sex-change procedures. In its decision in In re Personal Restraint of Monschke (2021), the progressive-dominated Washington Supreme Court overturned mandatory life without parole for serial killers below age 22, citing young people’s purportedly incomplete brain development.
But in adulthood, there is little further brain development. As Charles Gardner, PhD, notes, contrary to the progressive talking point that the “brain continues to develop up to age 25,” the “real truth” is that “our brains…are 99.999% complete by age 16.”
Although the brain is not fully developed before age 16, kids are getting surgical sex changes at ages as low as 14, and puberty blockers at ages as low as 8. An analysis of insurance claims by Reuters found 56 genital surgeries and 776 mastectomies among patients ages 13 to 17.
Minors are impressionable, and children — especially girls — sometimes decide they are transgender before changing their minds. This is a rapidly spreading phenomenon. As PJ Media notes, “A study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior confirms the common-sense conclusion many observers…have long drawn” that the rapid rise in the number of people identifying as transgender is “sociogenic.” “The findings were interesting on several fronts: ‘gender transition’ is driven by social pressure; females are by psychological disposition more susceptible to the ‘trans’ social contagion; and mentally ill youth were more likely than non-mentally ill to ‘transition.’”
Students’ identification of themselves as transgender can rise in response to LGBTQ pride messaging from teachers. An Austin school teacher claimed twenty out of her 32 fourth-graders “came out” to her as LGBTQ after LGBTQ pride week. Libs of TikTok released “internal messages from a 4th grade elementary teacher in @AustinISD. She’s upset that an entire week dedicated to LGBT still wasn’t good enough. Coincidentally, 20/32 of her FOURTH GRADERS are LGBT and have ‘come out’ to her.”
But gender transition procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort. As a transgender activist conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” That”s because physical pain and discomfort result from a sex change, and because of the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed:
Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to.
She still wants the sex change, but doctors don’t have magical powers, so “sex change” surgery can’t fully give transgender people the body they want. Hence, Chu’s admission that she won’t be happy, even after her sex change. The suicide rate of transgender people actually rises after they get sex changes, according to the Heritage Foundation.
Society, of course, pays the bill for sex change surgeries, which sometimes cost over $200,000, because the Affordable Care Act often requires insurers to cover sex changes and gender-reassignment surgery. So surgeries for people like Chu increase the health insurance premiums all insured Americans pay. Taxpayers end up directly paying for sex change surgeries for prison inmates (when progressive judges find inmates have an 8th Amendment right to a sex change) and for sex changes for federal employees such as soldiers. Under Biden, the Pentagon has paid for some soldiers to get sex changes. The Washington Examiner reported that “taxpayers will now foot the bill for gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel and veterans, with some treatments costing upward of $200,000 under an executive order signed by President Biden.”
Jazz Jennings was the poster child for child sex changes, with a TV show focused on celebrating Jazz’s sex change. But things aren’t going well for Jazz, who is now miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Now, Jazz is miserable, and says “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz has experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they said. The FDA has warned that the puberty blockers given to transgender kids as part of their gender transition can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss. Puberty blockers also prevent the increase in bone density that would normally occur during puberty, with some patients experiencing lifelong bone issues, according to the New York Times.
But progressive officials continue to support childhood sex changes. “Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine promised that medically changing kids’ genders will soon be normalized,” reports Fox News:
Meanwhile, the skyrocketing numbers of sex changes are beginning to lead to malpractice lawsuits. Fox News reports:
De-transitioned teenager Layla Jane is suing Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the medical providers who performed a double mastectomy on her when she was just 13 years old after beginning to identify as transgender two years before.
Now 18 years old, Jane is accusing the hospital system of “intentional fraud and concealment” involving her gender transition, alleging the doctors pushed her into the procedure and characterized her gender transition as the only way to treat her preexisting mental health problems….Jane’s lawsuit, according to reports from The Blaze, alleged doctors warned her of an increased risk of suicide if she failed to transition to male, adding that they gave her parents a binary option of living with a “live son” or suffering the consequence of having a “dead daughter.”
Jane’s lawsuit noted a series of health struggles brought on by the “permanent irreversible mutilation,” including inability to breastfeed, increased likelihood of an inability to conceive, and endocrine problems.
Sex-change doctors badger parents into getting a risky sex change for their child by using a manipulative script, asking them “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” (if they have a daughter) or “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?” (if they have a son). But these claims are “shoddy” and there is no reliable evidence that getting a sex change will reduce a gender-noncomforming child’s likelihood of committing suicide, as experts such as Leor Sapir have pointed out.
As Fox News reports, Layla Jane’s lawyer “who also represents de-transitioner Chloe Cole [in another malpractice lawsuit], alleged the lines used by doctors at Kaiser Permanente must be scripted since the same “live son” or “dead daughter” binary was allegedly used in both instances.”
These scaremongering claims by doctors were wrong. As the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir notes, Scandinavian authorities “have examined the evidence behind the affirm-or-suicide claim and have found it wanting….there is no good evidence that failing to “affirm” minors in their “gender identity” will increase the likelihood of them committing suicide….that claim is based on a small handful of deeply flawed studies that, at most, find loose correlations between “affirming” interventions and improved mental health. Some find no reduction of suicide at all, and a new study claims to find that puberty blockers actually increase the risk of suicide.”
An Ontario woman who lost body parts due to a sex change is also suing the doctors who rubberstamped her sex change.
Meanwhile, The London Daily Telegraph reports that Britain’s National Health Service says transgenderism is just a ‘phase’ for most kids who claim to be transgender:
Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.
NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.
The NHS describes a staggering 40-fold increase in use of “gender identity services” over the last ten years. Because many using these services are just going through a phase, and will not benefit from a sex change, the NHS will take a different approach to treating minors, noting “evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” which is a reason that “doctors should be mindful this might be a ‘transient phase.’”
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan notes, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” are now recommending against “prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors.”
Yet, in America, gender clinics are giving teenagers double mastectomies and other sex-change operations in many states. The Biden administration has promoted puberty blockers, even though the FDA says puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
As the New York Post notes, many girls who get sex changes will “struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors.” They temporarily identify as transgender boys, then get sex changes before realizing they are really just girls.
The number of girls temporarily identifying as “transgender” has skyrocketed. Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to describe this subset of transgender youth, typically biological females who become suddenly dysphoric during or shortly after puberty. Littman believes this may be due to adolescent girls’ susceptibility to peer influence on social media.
A variety of studies suggest that as many as 80% of dysphoric children could ultimately experience “desistance”— or coming to terms with their biological gender without resorting to transition. Which is why many professionals like Evans think it’s wise to hold off on potentially irreversible medical intervention for as long as possible….All these treatments run the risk of side effects that critics argue are too serious for children to fully understand. In the short term, puberty blockers can stunt growth and effect bone density, while the long-term effects are still unknown since they were only approved by the FDA in 1993. Side effects of testosterone include high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots and even infertility.
Two major studies conducted completely separately — one in Finland and one in Canada — found that 85-87% of teens with gender dysphoria grow out of it during adulthood.
It’s not just doctors and psychologists who have made mistakes in their zeal to be “gender affirming.” So have judges and government officials. Jamie Shupe gave an example in “I was America’s first ‘nonbinary person.’ It was all a sham.” Shupe is male, as he noted in the Daily Signal. But he wanted in vain to be a woman, due to a condition known as “autogynephilia.” When his therapist expressed skepticism about whether he would actually benefit from trying to change his sex, he filed a “formal complaint” against her, and found a new therapist, who affirmed his new “identity as a woman.” But eventually he changed his mind and declared he was nonbinary, not female:
When the fantasy of being a woman came to an end, I asked two of my doctors to allow me to become nonbinary instead of female to bail me out. Both readily agreed….To escape the delusion of having become a woman, I did something completely unprecedented in American history. In 2016, I convinced an Oregon judge to declare my sex to be nonbinary—neither male nor female.
As a result of this ruling, a “nonbinary option” now exists in many states, even though Shupe’s “sex change to nonbinary was a medical and scientific fraud.” The judge’s ruling was not based on any evidence. As Shupe observes, “the judge didn’t ask me a single question. Nor did” the judge ask “to see any medical evidence….Within minutes, the judge just signed off on the court order,” even though he did “not have any disorders of sexual development.” But three years later, “unable to advance the fraud for another single day,” he “reclaimed” his “male birth sex.”
