Even the accounts of the activists themselves reveal the true brutality of their treatments.
Even the accounts of the activists themselves reveal the true brutality of their treatments.
T he Ohio house voted to override Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would criminalize hormonal treatment and surgeries in minors for the purposes of gender transition, and prevent boys from competing in girls’ sports divisions.
You might think it is perfectly fair and defensible — even laudable — to oppose mutilating children through supposed “treatments” that might render them incapable of experiencing sexual satisfaction and destroy their fertility. Of course, there is a less dramatic reason to criminalize such radical measures being performed on a person of any age: No amount of drugs and incisions can transform a person’s sex.
Despite all these entirely sane objections to such devastating medical practices, Democrats condemned Republicans for overriding the governor’s veto and lodged fierce allegations. State representative and OB-GYN Anita Somani spoke out against the bill and said that “legislators don’t trust science,” later challenging, “Your Google search makes your knowledge equal to my 30 plus years in medicine?” State representative Jessica Miranda charged, “With this vote to override the governor’s veto today, you are literally killing our children . . . all to win your Republican primary races.”
Sadly, the people who so fervently scream, “Trust the science!” are those who depend upon poorly performed studies that fail to meet basic academic standards. Consider one study, reported on favorably by the Daily Beast, which was hailed as confirmation that males retain their fertility after “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” and therefore the Republican claims of incurable infertility were bogus. The study states:
The prevailing dogma in transgender health is that GAHT [gender-affirming hormone therapy] in trans women “eventually results in irreversible infertility.” This view has fueled controversy over the provision of GAHT, especially to adolescents, and is reflected in arguments to support legal efforts to restrict young people’s access to gender-affirming care.
Yet the study had merely nine participants, all of whom had undergone gender-related treatments after age 18 (in other words, after puberty), and four participants yielded low-quality sperm: “[They] had either low volume, low sperm concentration, and/or low sperm motility.” Of course, in practically any other area of science, a study with nine participants — with four yielding poor results — would be considered laughable evidence. The study in question doesn’t prove anything, and it certainly isn’t evidence in favor of expanding access to hormones therapies for minors.
Not too long ago, Democrats acknowledged that available scientific literature on gender-related treatments was not particularly rigorous. A 2016 memo by the Obama administration concluded that “there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.” A second memo that year found that “the quality and strength of evidence [on whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for patients with gender dysphoria] were low due to mostly observational study designs,” including (but not limited to) no comparison groups, confounding factors, small sample sizes, and “considerable lost to follow-up.” (The “lost to follow-up” can mean that the individuals who began gender-related treatments committed suicide, demonstrating that the treatment is not “life-saving.”)
The scientific literature has obvious faults, but critiques are often stifled by ideologically captured institutions. Consider the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2018 policy on “Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents.” One man, Dr. Jason Rafferty, “conceptualized the statement, drafted the initial manuscript, reviewed and revised the manuscript, approved the final manuscript as submitted, and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work.” The study was reviewed by two transgender activists prior to publication, which is hardly a defensible practice when determining medical policies. When physicians attempted to challenge the policy in 2022, the AAP suspiciously adopted a new procedural rule and effectively insulated it from review. How can we be expected to “trust the science” when the opposition is institutionally silenced? The more accurate progressive slogan would be, “Trust our claims about the science.”
Yet there’s no reason to cite a technical study (and its flaws) when you can hear the horror in the words of activists themselves. Gynecologist and vaginoplasty surgeon Mark “Marci” Bowers, a self-identified “transgender woman” and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), stated in a Duke University talk that “every single child who was, or adolescent, who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2 has never experienced orgasm.” (Tanner stage 2 is one of four developmental stages in puberty, usually occurring between ages nine and eleven.)
Bowers operated on male Jazz Jennings, the star of the I Am Jazz television show, who began hormonal transition at age eleven and underwent surgery to construct a pseudo-vagina at age 17. But the surgery was complicated, even disastrous; a follow-up procedure was scheduled, and as Jazz was getting onto the bed, surgeon Jess Ting heard a “pop” sound, recalling that “when I looked, the whole thing had split open.” Jazz then had a third surgery; Bowers said on television that “Jazz has had a very difficult surgical course” and it “turned out tougher than any of us imagined.” Ting admitted that Jazz “is one of the first to have undergone complete pubertal suppression” and presented a “lack of growth of the skin and other tissues which we rely on as surgeons to do this operation.” (Translation: Jazz had an underdeveloped penis that didn’t provide enough skin for the genital construction.) Aired video footage reveals the doctors arguing during the operation, as if conversational disagreement is a normal feature of such consequential procedures.
The progressives’ narrative on “gender-affirming care” consists simultaneously of the following arguments: This isn’t happening, but it’s happening and it’s good, and if it doesn’t happen, then people will die at record rates. We’re supposed to believe that Republicans’ legislation restricting gender-related medical interventions (especially for minors) is unnecessary because such treatments rarely occur. Yet the field’s leading doctors admit to the adverse effects of such interventions while defending them as “life-saving.” We can spend hours analyzing studies and debating their merits (or, more accurately, their lack thereof), but perhaps the best arguments against “gender-affirming care” are unintentionally set forth by those who perform or have undergone such interventions.