Republican states are cracking down on America’s horrific transgender mutilation crisis
The Daily Knight
Transgender mutilation of children has become a national crisis, and GOP states are taking action to stop it.
Original article at LifeSiteNews.
(LifeSiteNews) — Republican-led states are pushing back against the radical LGBT movement with a wave of new laws restricting devastating transgender surgeries and drugs for children.
2023 has been a breakthrough year in the fight to stop LGBT ideology and protect children from its harms. Since January, 14 states have approved laws to ban or limit “gender transitions” for minors, which have exploded in popularity in recent years as gender confusion has surged among youth.
Those states include Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Restrictions have also taken effect in Florida, where the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned the practices through Florida’s medical boards. In Missouri, Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a rule in April that would sharply limit transgender surgeries and drugs for both children and adults, but a judge has temporarily blocked it.
In Florida, Missouri, and four other states, bills against underage “gender transitions” have passed at least one legislative chamber this year. Similar legislation is moving forward in Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Carolina.
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas previously adopted laws or executive orders restricting the procedures.
The new laws, along with efforts to protect sex-specific sports and purge LGBT ideology from public schools, represent the strongest push against the LGBT agenda at the state level in years, at least since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2015.
Bans on “gender transitions” rebuke the essence of transgenderism: that everyone is defined by a so-called “gender identity” and that the body should be manipulated, even permanently and at a young age, if it conflicts with this “identity.”
As the LGBT movement has conquered American society, chemical and surgical mutilation of children to “affirm” a purported “gender identity” has become a national crisis.
At least 300,000 children in the U.S. are estimated to identify as “transgender,” and data shows that tens of thousands of minors have been subjected to transgender surgeries or drugs in the past few years.
At least 300,000 adolescents in the U.S. are estimated to identify as “transgender,” and data shows that tens of thousands of minors have been subjected to transgender surgeries or drugs in the past few years. The number of children undergoing some kind of “gender transition” every year may now be more than 30,000.
Hormonal interventions for gender-confused kids, like puberty-blocking drugs and artificial hormones, can sterilize them and lead to serious side effects, such as cardiovascular disease and reduced bone density. Transgender surgeries include irreversible procedures to remove sexual organs and construct synthetic genitalia and other features of the opposite sex.
Since the first pediatric “gender clinic” in the U.S. opened in 2007, hundreds of similar clinics have sprung up across the country to facilitate the mutilation of children, with the backing of activist-captured medical groups and the Democratic Party.
And while “transitioning” minors is dangerous, it’s highly lucrative, as hospital officials have admitted: Genital surgeries can cost more than $25,000, and chest surgeries between $3,000 and $10,000. Drugs to halt puberty run about $1,200 per month.
But GOP laws against child “gender transitions” are significantly disrupting the transgender mutilation industry: As of May, around 90,000 adolescents who identify as “transgender” — almost one-third of the national total — now live in states with laws or policies that protect them from gender mutilation, according to estimates from the left-wing Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. That’s up from 10 percent in January.
Bills still under consideration in Republican states could impact another 25,000 kids.
GOP states outlaw transgender ‘child abuse’
Compared by one medical expert to Nazi experiments, transgender surgeries and drugs are horrifying and frequently result in lifelong physical and mental damage.
So-called “gender-affirming care” for children with gender dysphoria, or distress about one’s sex, begins as early as age 8 with prescription drugs to stop them from going through puberty.
These drugs, known as GnRH agonists or “puberty blockers,” prevent the brain from releasing hormones that cause puberty — testosterone in boys and estrogen in girls.
GnRH agonists are typically used to treat precocious puberty and prostate cancer. They’re also used to chemically castrate sex offenders.
Pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1990s, the use of puberty blockers for “gender transitions” has never received government approval in any country, but the practice has spread rapidly in the West, including the United States.
According to data compiled last year for Reuters by Komodo Health, a health technology company, more than 20,000 children in the U.S. who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria underwent hormonal or surgical interventions from 2017 to 2021. At least 4,780 of them started taking puberty blockers.
Those numbers are “likely an undercount,” Reuters acknowledged, as they do not include minors without a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose “gender transitions” were not covered by insurance. Around 42,000 children and adolescents were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021, three times the number in 2017, according to the data.
While supporters often claim that puberty blockers are “reversible,” scientific evidence shows that isn’t true and that the drugs actually do serious, lasting harm.
Several studies have found that puberty blockers devastate bone density in children, putting them at risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and other injuries.
The package inserts for Lupron and Supprelin, two widely used GnRH agonists, warn of emotional side effects, including crying and aggression, convulsions, and pseudotumor cerebri, or elevated spinal fluid pressure on the brain. The insert for another common puberty blocker, Vantas, notes that it can cause paralysis and renal impairment and carries an “increased risk” of myocardial infarction, sudden cardiac death, and stroke in men.
Several studies have found that puberty blockers devastate bone density in adolescents, putting them at risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and other injuries.
The drugs can also lead to infertility and may prevent full maturation of the brain, experts have warned.
Dr. Quentin Van Meter, MD, a Johns Hopkins-trained pediatric endocrinologist and president of the conservative American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), told LifeSiteNews in 2021 that giving puberty blockers to children for gender dysphoria is “child abuse.” Interrupting natural puberty is “basically setting up a disease state,” he said.
“I think the steps that have been proposed in terms of making this an offense and considering it to be medically unethical should be pressed to the max,” Van Meter added.
Trans hormones creating ‘kids with atypical genitals’
With their puberty halted, the next step for children in the “transition” process is taking artificial hormones as early as age 12 to simulate the puberty of the opposite sex.
Cross-sex hormones — estrogen for males and testosterone for females — produce feminine secondary sex characteristics in boys and masculine ones in girls.
Boys who take estrogen will develop breasts, and fat will be redistributed to their thighs and hips. Girls who take testosterone will grow facial hair and their voices will get deeper, sometimes permanently. They’ll stop menstruating, if they ever did.
Cross-sex hormones also shrink testicles and disfigure female genitalia, as Jamie Reed, a whistleblower and former employee at the transgender center of St. Louis Children’s Hospital recently attested.
Gender clinics “are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals” by giving them hormones of the wrong sex, she wrote earlier this year.
If placed on cross-sex hormones after taking puberty blockers, children will never go through natural puberty and will be permanently sterile and without sexual function.
An American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) executive admitted as much in a meeting last year, saying that children on puberty blockers “probably will be infertile” if they “add in gender affirming hormone therapy [sic].”
Virtually all minors who start using puberty blockers for gender dysphoria continue on to cross-sex hormones, studies suggest. At the same time, the vast majority of kids with confusion about their sex — as many as 98 percent — grow out of it, or “desist,” after going through puberty as normal.
At least 14,726 minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria began using hormones from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo data, which, again, does not include children without a diagnosis or whose drugs weren’t covered by insurance.
If placed on cross-sex hormones after taking puberty blockers, children will never go through natural puberty and will be permanently sterile and without sexual function.
Like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones come with severe and even life-threatening side effects.
A study released in February found that taking hormones for gender dysphoria carries a “substantially increased risk” of serious cardiac issues, including stroke, heart attack, and pulmonary embolism. Previous studies have reported similar findings.
A 2019 study published in The BMJ found that men using estrogen have a 46 times higher risk of breast cancer and that women taking testosterone have a nearly 60 times higher risk of the disease.
Thousands of children mutilated by transgender surgeries
The final and most extreme step in “transitioning” children is the surgical mutilation of body parts, including sex organs.
It’s almost unimaginably barbaric.
So-called “sex change” or “gender reassignment” surgery includes procedures to remove and “reconstruct” genitalia and breasts, as well as “feminizing” and “masculinizing” facial surgeries and “body contouring” procedures.
For boys, transgender surgery includes breast implants, castration, and vaginoplasty — surgery to create a replica of female genitalia using penile or bowel tissue.
For boys, transgender surgery includes breast implants, castration, and vaginoplasty — surgery to create a replica of female genitalia using penile or bowel tissue.
“Gender reassignment” surgery for girls involves removing their entire reproductive system, including their uterus and ovaries, and constructing synthetic male genitals, often out of tissue from their thigh or forearm.
Girls may also have their breast removed.
The genital surgeries, of course, irreparably sterilize children and turn them into permanent medical patients who need lifelong follow-up. Research shows that people who undergo such surgeries have a 19-times higher suicide rate than the general population. Girls who undergo mastectomies will never be able to breastfeed their children, if they are even able to have any.
Liberals often claim that transgender surgeries are rarely, if ever, carried out on minors, but the procedures are far more common that supporters suggest.
Komodo’s analysis found 776 mastectomies conducted on girls ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021. Reuters noted that the tally “does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.”
Komodo found another 56 genital surgeries among minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria during the same three-year period. That number, surely an undercount, also excludes surgeries that were not covered by insurance or that were conducted on children without a dysphoria diagnosis.
Indeed, according to a 2021 literature review from the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, “over half” of surgeons who offer vaginoplasty “have performed vaginoplasty on an individual under age 18.”
“Surgeons are focusing more attention to gender reassignment surgeries in minors,” it states. “Nearly all surgeons relied on the term ‘maturity’ rather than chronological age to determine patients’ readiness for the procedure.”
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a radical LGBT activist group whose guidelines are followed by major health systems like Johns Hopkins, endorses “gender-affirming surgical interventions” for “eligible” adolescents. The group’s current “standards of care” include no age limits for surgeries. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons similarly endorses “gender-affirming mastectomy” for minors.
Several U.S. hospitals and gender clinics, moreover, have admitted to conducting mutilating transgender surgeries on kids.
Boston Children’s Hospital’s Center for Gender Surgery openly offers “gender affirmation surgery services” to adolescents, including chest “reconstruction” and breast implants to minors as young as 15. The hospital’s website previously said that it conducted vaginoplasty on 17-year-olds before it was changed after public outcry. Documents show that Boston Children’s has carried out at least 65 transgender chest surgeries on minors, the Daily Caller reported.
Seattle Children’s Hospital also offers transgender face and chest surgery to adolescents in their “mid-teens.” Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., does hysterectomies on 16-year-old girls and “younger kids,” officials said last year.
In Nashville, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) conducted mastectomies on underage girls until pausing them after an explosive report by the Daily Wire in September. Physicians at VUMC privately encouraged transgender surgeries for youth as a “huge money maker,” the Daily Wire revealed.
And in California, a recent study led by researchers at Kaiser Permanente Oakland noted that the hospital carried out over 200 “gender-affirming mastectomies” on minors between 2013 and 2020, including on girls as young as 12. The number of annual surgeries increased 13-fold during those seven years, from just five in 2013 to 70 in 2019, according to the study.
The total number of adolescent girls in the U.S. who have their breasts removed each year may now be in the low thousands.
The Gender Mapping Project, a user-made Google map that tracks hundreds of gender clinics, has identified dozens of other doctors and facilities that have subjected children to transgender surgeries, like Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, a Miami surgeon who promotes mastectomies to girls on TikTok. Gallagher claims to have done 13 breast surgeries on minors in 2021, before Florida’s ban took effect.
The total number of adolescent girls in the U.S. who have their breasts removed each year may be in the low thousands.
Global reckoning
The state bans on mutilating transgender surgeries and drugs are the culmination of years of advocacy by conservative Christians, experts outside the medical establishment, like ACPeds, and “de-transitioners,” a growing group of people who regret their “gender transitions,” such as Chloe Cole, Helena Kirschner, Keira Bell, Oli London, and Cat Cattinson.
The laws also follow a series of damning reports about gender clinics that have gained national attention in recent months, including Jamie Reed’s whistleblower testimony and the Daily Wire’s exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
And while the Biden administration and the LGBT lobby smear Republicans as “extremists” for opposing underage transgender procedures, the red-state crackdown comes amid a global reckoning about the practices.
In the last three years, Finland, Sweden, the U.K., and Norway have all moved to limit transgender surgeries and drugs for youth.
Finland was the first to do so, with revised guidelines in 2020 describing “gender reassignment of minors” as “an experimental practice” that should be avoided in favor of counseling.
In May 2021, Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, one of Europe’s top hospitals, announced that it would stop providing puberty blockers to minors under 16 due to risks of “extensive and irreversible adverse consequences.” One 11-year-old girl prescribed puberty blockers by the hospital had ended up with osteoporosis and damaged vertebrae. Others suffered liver damage and bone density problems.
Swedish health authorities formally recommended against transgender drugs for children the following year, warning of “uncertain science” and possible impacts on body mass and cognitive function.
Systematic reviews commissioned by NHS England in 2020 likewise determined that the “quality of evidence” supporting puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoria in minors is “very low.” The NHS has since ordered the closure of the U.K.’s national pediatric gender clinic, the notorious Tavistock clinic, and shifted toward “a watchful approach.”
Then, in March, days after Tennessee banned child “gender transitions,” Norway’s Healthcare Investigation Board called for new national standards for transgender interventions.
“The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-affirming treatment [sic] (hormonal and surgical), is deficient and the long-term effects are little known,” the agency said in a blistering report.
In Christ Crucified and the Most Victorious Heart of Jesus.
The Daily Knight, on behalf of the Knights Republic and the Ladies of the Most Victorious Heart of Jesus depend on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.
Click here to make a donation.
Click here to subscribe to The Daily Knight.
Comments