WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced legislation Wednesday that would ensure Americans subjected to gender “transition” procedures as minors have the ability to sue those responsible for life-altering harms.
The Protecting Our Kids from Child Abuse Act declares that physicians, clinics, hospitals, and educational institutions involved in transitions “shall be liable in accordance with this section to any individual who suffers bodily injury or harm to mental health (including any physical, psychological, emotional, or physiological harm) that is attributable, in whole or in part, to a gender-transition procedure performed on the individual when the individual was a minor.”
“What the American people are seeing take place at pediatric gender clinics in St. Louis and across the nation is appalling,” Hawley said of the measure. “Children who are harmed by these dangerous procedures, which are often irreversible and sterilizing, will now be able to fight back against those who perpetrated their abuse. And federal taxpayers will no longer be forced to foot the bill for abusive treatment.”
By contrast, the Biden administration fully supports the surgical, chemical, and psychological transitioning of minors.
Its actions have ranged from Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra declaring that “medical, surgical, mental health and non-medical” procedures to “affirm” patients’ gender dysphoria are “supportive form[s] of health care” (while refusing to answer whether minors’ transitions should be performed without parental consent); to former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claiming that “every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming health care for transgender kids is the best practice and potentially life-saving”; to issuing documents through HHS’s Office of Population Affairs and Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration’s National Child Traumatic Stress Network promoting “gender-affirming care” for “ transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents.”
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
On top of those issues, experts outside the medical establishment further warn that surgically or chemically reinforcing gender confusion imposes irreversible harm on children such as infertility, impairment of adult sexual function, and reduced life expectancy, as well as the psychological toll of being “locked into” physical alterations regardless of whether they change their minds when they mature, as attested to by many individuals who “detransitioned” back to their true sex.
The issue grimly illustrated in the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself after trying to live as a man for three years.