Children and Teens Suffer When Leftists Promise “Gender-Affirming Care”
“I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child, and I might be at increased risk for certain cancers, namely cervical cancer. … That realization, actually, was one of the biggest things that led to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken.
“No child should have to experience what I have. My consent was not informed…. Transitioning can damage your body and mind in ways that we may not fully understand.”
Permanently Wounded
This heartrending testimony came from seventeen-year-old Chloe Cole. She spoke at a public hearing in Florida, backing Rule 59G-1.050, designed to restrict Medicaid funds in cases of “transgender” procedures.
While the details may vary, her path is, unfortunately, all too familiar. When she was twelve, she decided she was a boy. She began taking testosterone about a year later. At age fifteen, she had a double mastectomy. When she was sixteen, she decided that she had made a horrible mistake and sought to recover her femininity.
A natural reaction when hearing this story is to wonder where Miss Cole’s parents were. After all, parents are supposed to protect their children from such mistakes. On June 28, Miss Cole told that part of her story to members of the California State Assembly. There, she spoke against SB 107, which would “authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction [from parents or legal guardians] because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.”
Deceiving Parents into Acquiescence
“My parents took me to a therapist to affirm my male identity, and the therapist did not care about causality or encourage me to learn to be comfortable in my body. He brushed off my parents’ concerns about the efficacy of hormones, puberty blocker and surgeries. My parents were given the threat of suicide as a reason to move me forwards in my transition. My endocrinologist after two or three appointments put me on puberty blockers and injectable testosterone.”
When she decided she wanted a double mastectomy, her “counselors” also handled this irreversible step in a cavalier fashion.
“I attended a top surgery class that was filled with around twelve girls that thought they were men. Most were my age or younger. None of us were going to be men, we were fleeing from the uncomfortable feeling of becoming women.
“My parents, on the other hand, were pressured to continue my so-called gender journey with the suicide threat.”
Every parent is horrified by the possibility that a child might commit suicide. When a presumably competent authority, like a doctor, says that suicide could happen, a caring but uninformed parent will agree to almost anything.
Using Adolescents as Pawns
Media outlets too numerous to count have carried Miss Cole’s story with lengthy quotations. However, virtually all of those outlets are conservative. An Internet search shows that no major network besides Fox carried the story. Local media in California or Florida seem to have missed the story. Leftist opinion sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post ignore it completely, at least as of this writing.
Immense forces on the left want to see California’s SB 107 become law and to block Florida’s Rule 59G-1.050. Those same forces back the Biden Administration’s support for “Equality and Visibility for Transgender Americans.” On March 31, 2022, the White House released a “Fact Sheet” that dealt with the issue with a string of glittering generalities.
“Transgender people are some of the bravest people in our nation. But nobody should have to be brave just to be themselves. Today, the Biden Administration announced new actions to support the mental health of transgender children, remove barriers that transgender people face accessing critical government services, and improve the visibility of transgender people in our nation’s data.”
The American Academy of Pediatricians is on board with the leftist cause.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that youth who identify as transgender have access to comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care that is provided in a safe and inclusive clinical space. We also recommend that playing on sports teams helps youth develop self-esteem, correlates positively with overall mental health, and appears to have a protective effect against suicide.”
There are Other Victims
Publicizing stories like Miss Cole’s could derail all of that work. Other stories like hers are also rising to the surface.
The New York Post related the story of Helena Kerschner of Cincinnati, who is “detransitioning” at age twenty-three.
“I was going through a period where I was just really isolated at school, so I turned to the Internet.” She found what she was looking for on Tumblr. “My dysphoria was definitely triggered by this online community. I never thought about my gender or had a problem with being a girl before going on Tumblr.”
There was also a component of contemporary and post-modern thought. “The community was very social justice-y. There was a lot of negativity around being a cis, heterosexual, white girl, and I took those messages really, really personally.”
The Post continued. “In Helena’s case, all it took to get a testosterone prescription was one trip to Planned Parenthood when she was 18. She said she was given four times the typical starting dose by a nurse practitioner in less than an hour, without ever seeing a doctor.”
Informed Consent?
In June 2021, the BBC covered the story of Keira Bell, who started taking puberty blockers at age fifteen and now regrets her decision. She told Australian anti-transition activist Lyle Shelton, “Allowing a teenager to either believe they are the opposite sex or that they will become that is a cruel lie.”
Miss Bell brought suit in a British court against the “gender clinic.” The British High Court found that under-16s were unlikely to be able to give informed consent to what it described as “experimental” treatment.
When the NHS appealed the case, Keira Bell’s attorney stated, “The need for a child to understand, retain and weigh up the salient facts is all the more important because, unlike life-saving cancer treatment, there is much uncertainty as to what the benefits of puberty blockers actually are.”
There Will Be More Victims
There will be more cases like these. Thanks to the anti-family, anti-tradition and anti-biology left, children are being “fast-tracked” into these clinics. Some states use parental objections to remove the child from the parents’ care. The media, the national government, and many local schools promote and support “transitioners.” However, there are those who are opposing this trend, as evidenced by the Florida bill and others like it.
How many Chloe Coles, Helena Kerschners and Keira Bells will it take before society realizes that evil people use confused and troubled children to promote their radical political agenda?
The madness must end.
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