Parents plead with Supreme Court to uphold state bans on transgender mutilation of children
Transgender activists(LifeSiteNews) — Families harmed by gender ideology, including some who had their children mutilated with transgender drugs and surgeries, want the Supreme Court to uphold state prohibitions on minors receiving the permanently damaging procedures.
Partners for Ethical Care filed an amicus brief in the United States v. Skrmetti case on behalf of families whose children either took drugs and surgeries to alter their appearances or who were at least pressured to do so.
The court will address this question: “Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all [so-called] medical treatments intended to allow ‘a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex’ or to treat ‘purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,’ violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.” The court will hear the case on December 4.
The filers are “parents of children who believed they were transgender and wanted medical interventions to change their bodies to conform to an identity that was inconsistent with their sex.” It is not possible for someone to change his sex. Further, the brief reiterates that there is mounting evidence of the dangers of the drugs and surgeries, which supports states’ rights to protect kids from them, filers stressed.
The parents were “subjected to misinformation and coercion from health care providers attempting to convince them to consent to the interventions,” according to the brief.
Proponents of subjecting children to life-altering surgeries, which can render them infertile and leave them with bone density loss, will often claim that the interventions are important to prevent suicide. “You must affirm or she will kill herself. Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” one hospital told parents of a gender-confused child, according to the brief. This is a common tactic of medical professionals who push gender ideology.
Even when the children did not have surgeries or get all the drugs requested, it still divided families, as pro-LGBT medical professionals eagerly pushed the interventions on behalf of the gender-confused child.
The brief highlights testimonies of “deception,” “lifelong injuries,” and “rending of family units,” which “illustrate the wisdom of Tennessee’s and Kentucky’s decision to prohibit the [procedures] for minors.”
For example, several families shared stories about their schools, including a homeschool co-op, secretly using different names for their children and otherwise hiding their new “gender identity.” They also shared horror stories of healthcare practitioners downplaying the risks of puberty blockers and pushing the idea the drugs would make their children happier.
Some children received the drugs – and demanded more.
One victim, a boy referred to as “B.” in the filing, “received puberty blockers after a single visit with an endocrinologist who met with B. without his parents present. According to B., the endocrinologist told him that they needed to get his parents ‘on board’ with his receiving estrogen once the puberty blockers started.”
“Within a week of receiving puberty blockers, B. began angrily demanding cross-sex hormones, i.e., estrogen,” the brief stated.
Medical practitioners repeated the false claim that transgender drugs are needed to lower suicide risk; in fact, the drugs have been linked to suicide. The parent, Andrea, was told her son would “commit suicide if she did not agree with his demand for hormones.”
Instead of making the boy more emotionally stable, the drugs actually appeared to make him worse.
He “became increasingly unstable and continued to demand hormones” and “began writing profanity-laden emails to the gender clinic demanding that they prescribe hormones over his mom’s objection.” This created a further “wedge” between the parent and child, as the doctors said they wanted to hand out the drugs to him, but couldn’t without his mom’s consent, according to the brief.
“Puberty blockers have done nothing to help B., but have only increased his instability, placing him on a conveyor belt to sterilizing cross-sex hormones,” the brief warns.
Parents shared similar stories of being pushed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Pornography, social media, peer pressure drive identification
The comments in the brief illustrate further how the medical establishment has bought into transgender ideology to the detriment of families. It also provides further evidence that transgenderism is driven largely by social influence and technology, including pornography use. YouTube and Tumblr were cited several times.
Two of the families harmed had children who had underlying mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, which appeared to contribute to the kids seeking out social media content and pornography and identifying as “transgender” or “pansexual.”
One girl, who attended a school for students with special needs, was heavily encouraged to “transition” by a psychiatrist.
The parents, referred to as Liz and Chris Doe, experienced this:
When mom came in, the psychiatrist informed Liz that they had decided A. was going to use her new name and pronouns at summer camp. Taken aback, Liz informed the psychiatrist it was a girls’ camp. The psychiatrist told Liz “they know how to handle these situations.”
Their daughter is currently wearing a “chest binder” and wants to have her breasts removed. “The Does are striving to protect their daughter from these medical interventions. A. at times refuses to talk with her parents because they
will not grant her demands,” the brief states. “They feel their parental authority has been taken out of their hands.”
Many parents cited, either specifically or in similar language, the phenomenon of social contagion, which is linked to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria and refers to transgender identification (to which could be added all the other LGBT “identities”) being driven by peer pressure.
The Does said more of their daughter’s friends have “join[ed] the transgender social trend.” Another family shared how only one person among their child’s 10 or 15 friends identifies as their actual sex.
The parent, Kristine, “notes these numbers mimic known social contagions, such as anorexia and cutting behavior,” according to the brief. Her daughter has “OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome and bulimia,” which underscores the connection between mental illness and transgender identification.
This brief is just one of many that are sounding the alarm on the harms of transgenderism and asking for the Supreme Court to uphold Kentucky and Tennessee’s protections for gender-confused minors.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has also called on the court to uphold the prohibitions, as has an accomplished Vanderbilt University legal scholar. Numerous other briefs on behalf of medical experts, academic scholars, and “detransitioners” have also been filed, according to the Supreme Court docket.
