You raise your autistic son so well he enrolls in college at age 15. You take him to the hospital, where the hospital convinces him that he is actually a transgender girl — something he has never claimed to be before — and reports you to child protective services for not being “gender-affirming.” Then, the hospital takes away your kid, and he ends up in the custody of a transgender hospital employee who believes in transitioning children without their parents’ consent.
This apparently happened, judging from media reports such as this story in the London Daily Mail:
A military family who lost custody of their autistic son after they refused to transition his gender are suing a major DC hospital. The family said their boy had never shown any desire to become a girl until, at 16, he was hospitalized for self-harming after a bitter breakup with his girlfriend in 2021. Staff at Children’s National Hospital informed the family that he wanted to be female and should be referred to using she/her pronouns going forward….His army veteran parents, from Prince George County in Maryland, rejected the suggestion, saying their son was ‘impressionable’ due to being autistic. They have accused the hospital of starting a ‘full-on campaign to transgender this child’ and accused staff of ‘mental re-programming’, saying their son had been forced to write letters to friends disavowing his previous male identity….the hospital used its emergency policies to keep the boy in its units and reported the parents to child protection services. The boy was then moved into foster care and hasn’t been back to the family home since. What followed has been a two-year legal battle for custody over the teen, who is now 19 and remains in foster care.
The parents…say their son was at risk because his [autism] means he is vulnerable to social manipulation….The boy’s father revealed how they had to sell their thriving business and four-bedroom family home to cover legal costs….Karl von Batten…who is supporting the parents, said the case was personal to him because he also has an autistic son. Mr. von Batten said: ‘To me, this is personal. My son is autistic, and if you tell him you are a penguin he will tell me he is a penguin.’
[Their son] is currently living with the hospital’s ‘non-gendered’ chaplain, Lavender Kelley, who regularly posts online about trans issues. In one post on Facebook from 2022, Kelley said they supported transitioning children without their parents’ consent….The lawsuit was filed in the Maryland District Court, accusing Children’s National Hospital of eight counts including negligence, inflicting intentional emotional distress and discriminating against someone based on their religion….Amos Jones, who is representing the family, previously said: ‘This is the craziest case I’ve ever had. I don’t know why there are people who think this makes sense. But I guess lots of people agree with this in Washington DC now.’
[The boy] texted friends in May 2021 to say that he was LGBT, but used masculine pronouns — and at no point indicated that he wanted to be female. Around this time, he was also undergoing tests for autism — and attending a counseling service for disabled children. He was willingly rushed to Children’s National Hospital in early November 2021, after he attempted to commit suicide following the end of his relationship with his girlfriend. But — after the hospital determined he had gender dysphoria — he was held there for 41 days. The child was then moved to foster services, the lawsuit said, and placed with a single foster mother who had a previous assault charge and was alleged to be a close friend of Ms Kelley’s. In July, 2022 — the boy made a second suicide attempt, and was re-admitted to Children’s National as a girl….The foster mother then died unexpectedly, with the boy believed to have been moved into the care of Ms Kelley, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is allegedly now pending in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a progressive-dominated court that seems to support sex changes, even when there is no medical need for them. The Fourth Circuit recently voted 2-to-1 not to block a progressive trial judge’s bizarre order in favor of a transgender inmate seeking a surgical sex change, after the prison system Transgender Accommodation Review Committee found that sex-change surgery was medically unnecessary. The trial judge did not find that the surgery was necessary, but took issue with “one of the committee doctor’s views on the medical efficacy of transgender surgery,” and ordered the prison system to either provide the sex change, or create a new Transgender Accommodation Review Committee whose membership would be approved by the judge. (See Zayre-Brown v. North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections (2024)).
Gender transitions can have serious side effects. 95% of young transgender people on testosterone develop pelvic flood dysfunction. Most have bowel issues and sexual dysfunction. The London Telegraph reported that around “87 per cent” of those studied “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.” “53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction.””Almost half had an ‘orgasm disorder’, while a quarter suffered from pain during sexual intercourse.”
A study found that sex changes massively increase suicide risks, rather than reducing them. Hot Air summed up this study as finding that “suicide risks” are “1200% higher after gender-affirming surgery.”
Sex-change 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 of 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. 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.
“Gender affirming” surgery is risky. “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,” notes Chris Elston. A “trans teen died from vaginoplasty complications during landmark Dutch study used to justify child sex changes,” reports The Post-Millennial. “Major complications began within just 24 hours of the surgery.”
Sex-change doctors have concealed the negative effects of such surgeries, as the Daily Caller recently noted:
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) apparently blocked Johns Hopkins University researchers from publishing their findings regarding a study concerning child sex changes because they didn’t like what they discovered, newly unearthed emails reveal.
WPATH paid for Johns Hopkins researchers to study the possible effects of so-called “gender-affirming care” on children, according to the emails. “Gender–affirming care” is a euphemism proponents use to describe the use of irreversible hormone suppression and treatments that can lead to chemical castration, as well as surgeries like mastectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty….The study allegedly found “little to no evidence” regarding support for children and adolescents who undergo these harmful procedures, the emails appear to show. Instead of ending their push to give minors irreversible sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments, WPATH appeared to block the study from being publicly released and published their recent guidelines encouraging doctors to continue operating on confused children.
Gender-transition surgery often has 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.”
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.
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.
