By Katelynn Richardson
A federal appeals court found Tuesday that banning child sex changes does not violate parents’ rights, days after another court came to the same conclusion.
The full Eight Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an injunction blocking Arkansas’ ban on sex changes procedures for minors Tuesday in an 8-2 decision. Oklahoma’s ban was likewise upheld by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 6.
Both cases cite the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which found Tennessee’s similar law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The appeals courts went further by rejecting parental rights claims not addressed in the Supreme Court’s ruling. (RELATED: Justice Thomas Bluntly Chastises Judges For Blind Faith In ‘Self-Described Experts’)
“Given the two parallel currents in this Nation’s history and tradition—first, states can prohibit medical treatments for adults and children, and second, parents cannot automatically exempt their children from regulations—this court does not find a deeply rooted right of parents to exempt their children from regulations reasonably prohibiting gender transition procedures,” the Eight Circuit majority held.
The Tenth Circuit held that “our Nation does not have a deeply rooted history of affirmative access to medical treatment the government reasonably prohibited, regardless of the parent-child relationship.”
“I applaud the court’s decision and am pleased that children in Arkansas will be protected from experimental procedures,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin wrote on X.
A study by an advocate of gender-affirming care found no improvement in mental health from puberty blockers.
“Gender-affirming care” leads to permanent and disfiguring changes. To overcome parents’ natural reluctance to subject their kids to this suffering, doctors who do sex changes often falsely tell parents that they need to gender-transition their kid to keep them from committing suicide, even though that’s not true. One of America’s most prominent gender doctor, “Dr. Olson-Kennedy disclosed to how she speaks with parents of gender dysphoric patients: ‘We often ask parents, “Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?”’” But one study found that sex changes massively increase suicide risks, rather than reducing them. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reported Just the News. The transgender lawyer challenging Tennessee’s restrictions on transgender treatments for minors, Chase Strangio, conceded to the Supreme Court that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming treatment, and that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
Transgender treatments have significant side effects. A recent study shows 95% of young biological women on testosterone developed pelvic floor dysfunction. As the London Telegraph reports, “Around 87 per cent of the participants had urinary symptoms such as incontinence, frequent toilet visits and bed-wetting, while 74 per cent had bowel issues including constipation or being unable to hold stools or wind in. Some 53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction.”
