A California GOP congressman has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would prohibit gender reassignment medical interventions on minors. Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s bill, HR 8012, was introduced on August 11. His website states:
The Protecting Children from Experimentation Act would prohibit doctors from performing experimental gender reassignment treatments on children. Puberty-blocking hormones followed by cross-sex hormones can cause irreversible damage to children’s bodies, including an increased risk of cancer and permanent sterilization.
LaMalfa stated:
Our society has quickly “normalized” gender experimentation under the guise of an “accepting” political ideology rather than biological reality. Even more troubling, children are undergoing experimental treatments, like being injected with puberty-blocking hormones and cross-sex hormones, which have irreversible consequences, such as permanent sterility. Both the Protecting Children from Experimentation Act and the End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act aim to protect children and taxpayers from paying the high price of these unethical medical interventions. As minors, children cannot vote, join the military, or open a bank account; it’s our job as society, and especially parents, to protect them from making life altering gender experimentation decisions that they may likely later regret.
“Children are precious and our future, and they are worth defending. No child should be forced to undergo medically unnecessary, life-altering procedures in the name of progressive gender ideology. No taxpayer should be forced to pay for these harmful ‘reassignment’ procedures for any individual. I applaud Rep. LaMalfa for taking action to protect our children,” said Jessica Anderson, Executive Director of Heritage Action for America.
“The BBC reported back in March on a lawsuit against the United Kingdom’s leading gender identity clinic, with a detransitioned female patient stating that she was rushed into irreversible hormonal interventions that she later came to regret,” The Daily Signal noted, while referencing a statement from Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George at The Public Discourse:
Whatever one may think about the ethics of medical professionals’ ‘transitioning’ adults, everyone should be able to agree that adults should not interfere with the natural, healthy development of the bodies and minds of children.
Children must be provided with the time and space to develop to maturity. To tell a child that he or she is of the opposite sex (or both, or neither—something underwritten today by standard children’s ‘gender’ books), or to encourage a child’s mistaken belief that he is something other than a boy, or she something other than a girl (however sensitively one may, and should, be handling such a situation), is deeply unjust to that child.
To intervene in a child’s physical development, to block the child from going through normal puberty—all in an attempt to ‘affirm’ a ‘gender identity’ that rejects bodily reality—is profoundly unethical.
“Administering estrogen to boys or testosterone to girls eventually results in permanent sterility—a consequence that children are in no way equipped to consent to or even fully grasp the implications of,” The Daily Signal stated, adding, “The authors of the largest study to date on the mental health outcomes of individuals who have undergone sex-reassignment surgery or hormonal transition were forced to admit that the data showed no decrease in mood or anxiety disorders for those who transitioned medically.”