The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday has agreed to hear a challenge to a Tennessee law that bans doctors from tinkering with the gender appearance of children with hormones, chemicals, and the surgeon’s knife.
The case is United States v Skrmetti, and it involves Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments that are intended to help a child “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.” The plaintiff says the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
The case will be argued at the Supreme Court this fall. The next term for the court begins in October and it’s unlikely a decision will be delivered before June of 2025.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing plaintiffs Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville, and their 15-year-old son who believes he is a girl and who has been medically and chemically altered to appear as a girl. There are two other anonymous plaintiffs and transgender-services Dr. Susan Lacy also represented by ACLU, which says the entire medical community supports being able to alter a child’s gender appearance at the request of the families.
Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said, “These bans represent a dangerous and discriminatory affront to the well-being of transgender youth across the country and their Constitutional right to equal protection under the law. They are the result of an openly political effort to wage war on a marginalized group and our most fundamental freedoms. We want transgender people and their families across the country to know we will spare nothing in our defense of you, your loved ones, and your right to decide whether to get this medical care.”
Major U.S. medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association oppose laws against gender-chemistry treatments for children, which they call “gender-affirming care.”
This new area of medicine has become a major profit center for doctors and pharmaceutical manufacturers that are creating customers for life, as they hook children on hormone treatments that must be continued for the duration of their lives.
An Alaska House bill sponsored by Rep. Jamie Allard of Eagle River would clarify the liabilities that physicians have if a child who they transition later has buyer’s remorse and sues the doctors for malpractice. That bill, which created civil liability language for such physician decisions, failed to move in the Legislature this year.
I’m bothered by the broader implications of this. As a sane man, the mutilation of children is unconscionable.
Parents who push it should lose custody of their children.
However, the binary choice is a small step too far. In the very, very, very, very few cases where such treatment is appropriate, parents should have the right to seek it out. They should have to jump through 10,000 hoops to get it, but it should be available. When genuinely medically necessary. As a parent I support the prerogative to pursue whatever treatment I deem (along with medical and mental health professionals) necessary for my child.
Every time we allow government into the doctors office, we lose freedoms.
Whatever the decision, child mutilation must be so difficult to obtain it forces everyone involved to move at a snails pace.
Sean Connery’s wife said it best after he made the announcement that he was not going to do another. James Bond movie and then he later decided to do one more. She told him …. Never Say Never Again, which was the name of the movie. Ironically. The point is, We’re dealing with medicine and should never be able to say never, because as rare as they may be. Possibilities arise where some things are necessary.
Greg, If you could figure out how to change every chromosome in every cell in a man’s body then you may be onto something. Time travel seems more plausible.
The source of all wisdom says, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away but my words will never pass away.” Mat24:35.
I believe that all transgender tinkering should be done after a child turns 18. The changing of one’s body before that adult age is not fair to the individual. Anyone younger than that, regardless of parent input is not prepared for the overall final effect of their actions. At least they have made the “change position” as an adult and as an adult, they are the one’s responsible for that decision.
Gender transition is being foisted upon our youth everywhere they are (school and social media).
All of this should start with many years of mental health care first, and NOT from those foisting gender transition upon our youth. We all have to accept our own selves first. It has become a money making “industry”…. VERY BAD IDEA
Children never have been able to make life changing decisions. For a reason. They choose anything that flies in the face of their parents (rebellion), that’s what kids do.
Until they are 18 and are considered an adult, only then, can they brutally maim themselves. There is a reason we don’t cultivate this ridiculous lie the LGBTQ pushes that you can change your sex.
It’s a case of mental retardation if a boy thinks they can “become” a woman just from taking some hormones and getting breast implants, they are not mentally right. Same way for females thinking they can be men.
It’s child abuse to allow this to continue. Shut off the TV, homeschool them, talk to your kids more and get involved in their lives. These are the time out children of yesteryear…. No consequences…Parents need to seriously start parenting and stop using their kids as a weapon!
This is medical malpractice, not health care.
This bunch of “quacks” need their medical licenses revoked, they are doing extreme harm to our youth (and any adults the6 are MIS-treating.
Its all about the benjamins for any doctor giving gender transition anything.
These kids need mental health care to accept themselves as they were born.
What idiocy to foist “gender transitions” on anyone. Transition to an adult, accept yourself as you were born.
Be you.
The following activities are age-restricted: smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, driving a car, entering into a contract, working at many jobs, investing in stocks, entering a casino, owning a gun, getting a tattoo, adopting pets, renting cars, serving in the army, getting plastic surgery. Obviously so-called sex-change surgery should also be restricted. Common sense needs to prevail.
You should have mentioned that Dunleavy has been chemically castrating children with experimental gender treatments for years now using “Denali Kidcare” taxpayer money.
Let’s be honest. I understand if one wants to alter their phenotype somewhat to appear as the opposite sex, then the earlier they start the alteration the more convincing the outcome. On the other hand, a person’s genotype cannot be altered. Telling a child they can actually change their sex is a dirty lie. It’s unfaire to the child. At the very least, the child should be told the truth: that no matter how their phenotype is modified, their sex vsnnoy be changed. The process is only an imitation. Let’s stop lying to each other. The king has no clothes on.