One of the most contentious topics in the zeitgeist — and history, for that matter — has to do with “transgender children.”
Supporters of the concept argue that it’s okay to make irreversible medical decisions and lifelong medication dependencies for children to “affirm” their “gender identity.”
Critics counter that “transgender children” don’t even exist, given that children can also sometimes identify as a dinosaur or a helicopter.
The current administration of President Donald Trump firmly falls into the latter camp, including the Department of Health and Human Services and its leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But now, a number of states from the former camp are taking the fight straight to the other camp.
According to Axios, 19 states and Washington, D.C., are suing Kennedy and the HHS to block the Trump administration’s efforts to curb “gender affirming” care for minors.
On Dec. 18, Kennedy put out a declaration saying, “Sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors, and therefore, fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s all Democratic officials that took issue with that declaration.
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, along with the Democratic attorneys general of Oregon, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington, and D.C., are jumping onto this lawsuit.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield is spearheading this charge.
“By targeting Oregon providers, HHS is putting care at risk and forcing families to choose between their personal health care choices and their doctor’s ability to practice,” Rayfield said. “Healthcare decisions belong with families and their healthcare providers, not the government.”
(Curiously, this argument never arose from government officials during the height of COVID restrictions.)
The lawsuit itself was filed in an Oregon District Court and claimed that the HHS mandate causes “immediate, significant, and harmful impacts” on the 19 states, plus D.C.
When Axios reached out to the HHS for comment, they were redirected to one of Trump’s earliest executive orders.
“Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” Trump wrote in that January order.
The president elaborated, “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
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