Transgender adults should be able to live as they wish and do whatever they like with their own bodies. But conservatives have many fair concerns when it comes to “trans” children receiving sometimes-irreversible medical transition treatments.
Some children experiencing gender dysphoria will indeed experience persistent gender confusion and end up as transgender adults, such as my friend Blaire White. But many others will grow out of it. Many will simply end up being gay men or lesbian women. This may not occur if they’re prematurely pushed into life-altering medical treatments, however, which decrease the odds they’ll reconcile with their birth biology. Early treatments can also lead to tragic cases of “desisters” or “detransitioners” — basically, people who realize too late that changing sexes was a mistake and are left irreversibly scarred. (Sometimes, they’re left sterilized.)
It’s simply impossible for minors under the age of consent to understand their gender, sexual orientation, and biology fully enough to consent to drastic medical treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery. In many cases, they haven’t even gone through, let alone completed, puberty yet!
All of this said, the state of Texas’s latest efforts to prohibit child transitioning go much too far. Gov. Greg Abbott has directed a crackdown on medical professionals who provide many of these medical treatments, which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has decided are “monstrous,” “abusive,” and illegal.
Taking it even further, Abbott has directed Texas’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents whose children received these treatments. Presumably, parents being investigated for “child abuse” under these new orders could face serious consequences or even have their children taken away from them. This is insane.
Put yourselves in the shoes of these parents for a moment. You have a child who is deeply confused about their gender. You are worried out of your mind because statistics show that transgender youth have a much higher risk of suicide attempts and death by suicide. Scared of losing your child, you take them to a psychiatrist/doctor.
That doctor assures you that what your child needs is to begin puberty blocker medication and/or eventually hormone treatments. That doctor tells you this has been statistically shown to improve mental health outcomes and reduce the risk of suicide. (Whether this is true or not is currently a matter of robust scientific debate, but it is what many doctors often tell families.)
So, trying to do what’s best for your child, you consent to the treatment. The thought of not doing so and losing your troubled child to suicide is simply too much to bear.
Are you guilty of child abuse?
Not under any empathetic and reasonable standard. Abbott’s radical move treats parents trapped in a terrible, heart-wrenching situation who simply listen to medical experts as criminals. They should not be viewed in this way, but with our utmost compassion and grace.
We can and should push back on children being put through these risk, sometimes irreversible treatments at ages where they’re too young to understand the full ramifications of the decisions they are making. We can also consider legislative solutions protecting young people until they reach the age of consent and can fully make an informed decision for themselves about these treatments.
But if Republicans go down that path, it should be by legally prohibiting doctors and institutions from providing these services (which Abbott’s order also does), not by criminalizing parents who are simply trying to help their children. Charging well-intentioned parents with “child abuse” is unfair, unnecessary, and frankly, cruel.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a co-founder of Based-Politics.com, a co-host of the BasedPolitics podcast, and a Washington Examiner contributor.
