ACLU Sues to Stop Texas from Protecting Minors from Sex-Change Procedures

by Zachary Mettler | March 1, 2022 | Sexuality

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit aiming to stop the state of Texas from protecting minors from harmful, abusive “sex-change” procedures.

Last week, The Daily Citizen reported that Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate any instances in which a doctor or parent enables a child to receive “sex-change” procedures.

Gov. Abbott directed DFPS to “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of … abusive procedures in the State of Texas.”

These practices include a “wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning,” including “reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or … doses of testosterone or estrogen.”

Of course, none of these actually change a child’s sex.

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, the ACLU called the order “dangerous, dehumanizing, and terrifying,” to deny minors access to these procedures, asserting that they are “lifesaving” and “medically necessary.”

“These efforts to cut off and criminalize necessary health care for transgender minors are in direct conflict with the recommendations of medical professionals and have nothing to do with what’s best for trans youth,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a press release.

In reality, even though the ACLU may disagree, it is compassionate and good medical practice to deny minors access to these life-altering drugs and surgeries.

Providing minors with cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and “sex-change” surgeries that inhibit their normal sexual development, or remove and disfigure healthy body parts, is contra-scientific and harmful.

In fact, according to the DSM-5 (The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition), “as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”

In other words, if “watchful waiting” is used as the treatment program for minors who struggle with gender dysphoria, a vast majority will come to accept their biological sex following puberty.

That makes the rush to somehow change minors into the opposite sex, as soon as they think they may want to be the opposite sex, all the more foolish.

Hopefully, Gov. Abbott’s order protecting minors from these harmful procedures will stand up in court.