“The Biden Admin just decreed that doctors nationwide must perform gender transitions or suffer federal penalties…This scheme is bad for patients, bad for religious liberty, and illegal,” explains Luke Goodrich, a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “A similar rule from the Obama Admin was nixed by federal courts. Now the Biden Admin is reimposing the same rule on doctors and hospitals who aren’t protected by earlier lawsuits.”
“Why are rates of transgender identification skyrocketing? One cause is often overlooked: the law. Multiple laws channel kids down the path of gender transition, creating a powerful ‘transgender conveyor belt.’ Here’s how it works,” explains Goodrich.
“1. School boards adopt curricula to ‘disrupt’ kids’ thinking on gender as early as pre-K. In Maryland, e.g., schools don’t let parents know when these concepts are taught or let kids opt out. So some kids start questioning their gender.”
“2. If a kid questions her gender, many schools are legally required to affirm new identities with pronouns, bathrooms, and the like–and conceal it from parents. California and NJ even sued schools that dared notify parents, claiming it violated kids’ ‘privacy.”
“3. If parents take a kid to counseling, 22 states and 100+ local governments now have “conversion-therapy bans.” These laws require counselors to assist gender transitions and forbid helping kids embrace their biological sex. So counseling goes only one way: toward gender transition.”
“4. If parents affirm a child’s God-given body, some states now strip custody. Indiana took a child from Catholic parents after they wouldn’t call him by a new female name and pronouns, and put him in a foster home “where she is accepted for who she is.”
“5. Likewise, Massachusetts and Oregon deny parents the chance to foster and adopt if bureaucrats think parents wouldn’t “affirm” a child who might someday, hypothetically, seek a gender transition.”
“6. If a child wants a gender transition, the federal government requires employers and insurers to pay for it. If an insurance plan excludes that coverage, employers and insurers can be sued for “sex” discrimination.”
“7. Many doctors know gender surgeries harm kids. But the feds passed a rule requiring doctors to perform those procedures, including on children, or be guilty of “sex” discrimination. So doctors that offer hormones for menopause, or mastectomies for breast cancer, must do the same for girls who want to look like boys–or risk federal penalties.”
“This is how the conveyor belt works: Schools encourage kids to embrace a new gender. Teachers must affirm it and hide it from parents. Counselors must support it. Parents must go along or risk losing custody. Employers and insurers must pay for it. Doctors must perform it. All imposed by law:
Society often pays for transgender people’s sex change surgeries, which sometimes cost over $200,000, because Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) often requires insurers to cover sex changes and gender-reassignment surgery.
But sex-change surgeries are frequently a bad investment, because they often have life-threatening complications. “The truth about transgender surgery” is that “Just 16% of gender dysphoria patients go through with the operation, but up to half suffer life-threatening complications,” reports the London Daily Mail. “Up to half of trans men and women suffer post-op issues or pain so severe they need medical attention or additional surgery months later….Patients are often left with infections, pain and difficulty using the toilet or having sex post-surgery….the Women’s College Hospital (WCH) in Ontario, Canada, earlier this year found that more than half of trans women who had ‘bottom’ surgery were in so much pain years later they needed medical attention.”
Even transgender people who demand to receive sex-change surgery admit that the results are not great. A transgender activist conceded that in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” 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 her the body she wants. Hence, Chu’s admission that she won’t be happy, even after her sex change, due to the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery.
The suicide rate of transgender people actually rises after they get sex changes, according to the Heritage Foundation.
The fact that so many transgender people never get a surgical sex change suggests that such procedures are not a great investment, that taxpayers and insurers should not be forced to pay for them, and that doctors should not be forced to perform them.
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.
“An 18-year-old boy died when doctors tried to create a vagina for him using part of his colon. His colon was used because puberty blockers stopped growth of his genitals, which meant there wasn’t enough tissue to do the penile inversion surgery,” noted Chris Elston. A “trans teen died from vaginoplasty complications during landmark Dutch study used to justify child sex changes,” reported The Post-Millennial. “Major complications began within just 24 hours of the surgery.”
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan noted, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” have recommended 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 said puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
Minor who identify as transgender are often being put on puberty blockers, and — less frequently — are receiving surgical sex-change procedures, such as top surgery. A 2023 analysis of insurance claims by Reuters found 56 genital surgeries and 776 mastectomies among patients ages 13 to 17. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia referred children for puberty blockers at ages as low as 8, and for surgical procedures at ages as low as 14.
