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At the tail end of last year, the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper advocating for government intrusion into the family if parents disagree with their kids about dangerous experimental transgender drugs. Among other things, the paper suggested that Child Protective Services should remove children from their parents if the children identify with the gender opposite their biological sex and the parents do not wish for them to take dangerous experimental "treatments."
According to the abstract, the paper focuses on "how to proceed if a minor and their parents have disagreements concerning their gender-affirming medical care." After studying "ethical, paediatric, adolescent and transgender health research," the authors "discuss three potential avenues for providing gender-affirming care over parental disagreement: legal carve-outs to parental consent, the mature minor doctrine and state intervention for neglect."
The authors — professors and plastic surgeons in New York, Michigan, and Washington State — approach "this parent-child disagreement in a manner that prioritises the developing autonomy of transgender youth in the decision-making process surrounding medically assisted gender affirmation." In other words, the authors assume that if a child consistently insists that he or she is "really" a she or he, medical professionals should encourage that child to take experimental transgender drugs and be put on a path to surgery, even if the parents want to protect their child from taking this dangerous path.
The experimental drugs are "gender-affirming," so the child's "autonomy" outweighs the parents' rights, even though the child is not legally considered old enough to vote or drink alcohol or be considered responsible for himself or herself.
According to this logic, parents who object to transgender medical experimentation on children who seek to transition are guilty of neglect.
"Neglect, as a medico-legal term, can be used to initiate an evaluation by Child Protective Services and remove a parent as a child’s legal guardian in the most severe instances," the authors write in the full report. Citing pro-transgender literature, the authors claim that experimental medicine lowers depression and other high-risk behaviors among gender-confused young people.
"We conclude that situations where a parent prevents a minor from receiving treatments related to gender dysphoria violate the Harm Principle and justify state intervention," the authors claim.
This position echoes a radical shift in the medical field. The binary nature of biological sex had long been seen as a given, especially after genetics revealed the XX and XY chromosomes that code for female and male, respectively. Yet thanks in part to the influence of billionaires and Big Pharma and the success of the LGBT activist movement, medical professionals have embraced the idea that experimental treatments to affirm a gender identity opposite a person's biological sex are not only healthy but necessary — to prevent these vulnerable people committing suicide.
Yet many doctors have spoken out against these "treatments."
"I call it a development blocker — it’s actually causing a disease," Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an independent private practice endocrinologist in Rocklin, Calif., who consults with Sutter Roseville Medical Center, told PJ Media last year. The disease in question is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. It occurs when the brain fails to send the right signal to the gonads to make the hormones necessary for development.
While endocrinologists — doctors who specialize in hormones and the endocrine system — are familiar with the disease and gladly treat it when a patient has been diagnosed, many of them are effectively causing their patients to contract the same disease in an attempt to affirm gender identity, Laidlaw said. "An endocrinologist might treat a condition where a female’s testosterone levels are going to be outside the normal range. We’ll treat that and we’re aware of metabolic problems. At the same time, an endocrinologist may be giving high levels of testosterone to a female to 'transition' her."
The effects of cross-sex hormones and so-called "puberty blockers" are far from fully known, but studies suggest people who take these "treatments" increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, deep vein thrombosis, and weaker bone density. Laidlaw has suggested that alterations to children's chemical makeup may also stunt brain development.
These hormones may also leave children sterile, unable to have children of their own when they grow up. Children who start on "puberty blockers" and cross-sex hormones are far more likely to undergo genital surgery, which permanently sterilizes them. Concerns about "chemical castration" are very real.
Yet Dr. Andre Van Mol, a board-certified doctor in Redding, Calif., told The Christian Post's Brandon Showalter that transgender ideologues have taken control of major medical organizations.
"Transgender ideologues now seem firmly in the driver's seat of establishing policy for several of these medical organizations, most notably the ones for pediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers," Van Mol said. "It is not based on science or long-term evidence. Many of us see this as a replay of the lobotomy movement of the '50s and '60s. Opposition to it knows no boundaries of politics or faith, and it is gaining momentum."
The case of 7-year-old boy James Younger has drawn national attention to this issue. Younger's mother insists that the boy is really a girl, and is engaged in a custody battle with the boy's father, whom she divorced. The mother claimed she "knew" James is a girl because he liked the movie Frozen and asked for a girl toy at McDonald's. The father claimed that the mother dressed up James in dresses at the tender age of three. The mother wants hormone "treatments" for her son and the father testified in court that she wants to remove the boy's genitals.
Parents who disagree with this approach to transgenderism have already lost custody of their children. In 2018, Christian parents in Ohio lost custody of their 17-year-old daughter for refusing to give her transgender drugs. Child Protective Services has a history of removing children from their parents for no good reason, and this Journal of Medical Ethics article is only making the situation worse.
Parents and citizens need to speak up to make sure that the government does not remove children from their parents for the crime of disagreeing with the new transgender orthodoxy. This is nothing less than terrifying.
Tyler O'Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.