By TIM BARTO
Rep. Jamie Allard of Eagle River is taking a courageous stance by introducing a bill to protect minors who had gender transition procedures done to them by medical professionals.
The legislation, House Bill 338, reads, in part:
“Civil liability for gender transition procedures performed on minors. A person who, as a minor under 18 years of age, received a gender transition procedure may maintain a claim for recovery of damages against the physician who performed the procedure for an injury or condition suffered as a result of the procedure. An action brought under this section must be commenced within 20 years after the accrual of the cause of action. In this section, “physician” means a person licensed as a physician under AS 08.64.”
What makes her introduction of this bill courageous is the inevitable torrent of hate and accusations of transphobia that will be thrown at her and anyone else who supports the legislation. And that’s a shame, because standing up for children and holding medical professionals accountable for destroying children’s bodies is noble.
It shouldn’t be controversial; in fact, it shouldn’t really have to take place at all or be labeled a courageous act, but in today’s society common decency is portrayed as indecent and is accompanied by any number of “phobic” labels the unhinged crowd can throw.
The question now becomes, “which legislators will support such legislation?”
The tide is turning on the issue of transgender matters, especially when it comes to minors. People are seeing the damage it causes and the true evil it doesn’t just represent but actually embodies. The screeching mobs who get all the attention from their allies in the mainstream media are finally beginning to see people fighting back.
The issue has reached a point where even those on the left side of the aisle will have to start paying attention, and we owe it to some brave young women who have led the fight: Riley Gaines, the All-American swimmer who has led the charge to expose the unfairness of men competing as women and how it endangers Title IX and women’s sports as a whole; and Chloe Cole, a young lady who at the age of 15 was allowed to have her breasts removed in her premature decision to try and become a boy.
Their publicity of these issues has begun to open the eyes of people who either looked the other way or just didn’t want to deal with the vitriol and threats that come with espousing thoughts other than those deemed enlightened by the self-proclaimed enlightened.
Sen. Shelley Hughes of Palmer is continually asking decent people to speak up and let their voices be heard. During an appeal to an Association of Mature American Citizens gathering last week, Senator Hughes said that 80% of the people who call or email their legislators, or testify to legislative committees, are from the left side of the political aisle, a figure that does not mirror reality. It’s just that the leftists are committed to their causes. Wrong though they may be, they are passionately committed.
Now it is time for those legislators who are passionately committed to saving children from being mutilated by medical practitioners who get their permission to do so from submissive parents who feel that a child has the maturity to make decisions to alter their bodies.
This legislation will hold physicians accountable for the irreversible damage they do to children. Sex change procedures, now known as gender affirming care in Orwellian doublespeak, is becoming more common and is a growing source of revenue for medical institutions and physicians. Holding them accountable, as Chloe Cole is attempting to do by suing the medical practitioners who prescribed her hormone blockers when she was only 13 and removed her breasts at 15, should wake them up.
Allard’s bill means that physicians will have to weigh the potential hit in their pocketbooks when deciding to alter a child’s body. Her fellow legislators will now have to make known if they think children should be able to make life-altering decisions regarding their own bodies.
Tim Barto is vice president of Alaska Family Council and a regular contributor to Must Read Alaska.
