Family Policy Alliance (FPA) announced the beginning of a new campaign – Help Not Harm – to protect children struggling with sexual identity confusion from harmful and disfiguring “medical treatments” such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. The announcement comes as such procedures are growing across the country, especially among adolescent, teen and young adult women.
In a press release announcing the launch, FPA said, “The project aims to multiply the number of states that legally protect children from the damage of transgender interventions.”
“Parents and lawmakers who visit the Help Not Harm website will find information about the detrimental effects of ‘transition.’ ‘Transition’ can include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even mutilating surgeries. The site also includes answers to common questions about gender dysphoria, transition, and meaningful ways to help struggling children. These answers were reviewed by experts at the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA),” the press statement continued.
Dozens of Focus on the Family-friendly national organizations and allies in the Family Policy Council movement applauded the campaign, including the Ethics and Public Policy Center, CMDA, the American College of Pediatricians and the American Principles Project.
Only two states, Arkansas and Tennessee, protect minors from such interventions. In April 2021, the Arkansas legislatures overturned a veto to pass the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” (SAFE Act), into law. The state is now defending the act as it was challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union. Seventeen state attorneys filed a brief in support of the law.
“We should never grow weary of protecting children,” said Arkansas State Representative Robin Lundstrum, who was the lead house sponsor of the Arkansas SAFE Act.
“Now, it’s time for other states to do the same. … We must work together to pass legislation like the SAFE Act across the country so that children in every state are protected from chemical and surgical castration,” she added.
In May 2021, Tennessee also passed legislation to prevent healthcare prescribers from offering hormone treatment for “gender dysphoric or gender incongruent prepubertal minors.” Leftist and LGBT activist groups call such laws protecting children, “discriminatory,” and they say the legislation “restricts trans access to health care.”
Real health care for minors suffering from sexual identity confusion would lead a child to embrace his or her biological reality – not stop their natural body and brain development and growth; disfigure and sterilize them; and risk major medical complications such as low bone density, high blood pressure, breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis, and cardiovascular disease.
In some states, radical activists have passed legislation to keep counselors and medical professionals from even working with minors to assist them in accepting their biological sex.
The campaign was launched just after the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) announced that the number of so-called “gender confirmation surgeries” grew by 12% in 2020, to 16,353 procedures. The growth came in a year when health care and elective surgeries were limited due to the COVID‑19 pandemic.
As a mom concerned about this trend pointed out on Twitter, those numbers don’t include surgeries done by general surgeons, OBGYNs and urologists.
Surgical procedures on boys and men with sexual identity confusion may include facial and body feminization, breast augmentation, removal of testicles, and “genital reconstruction.” None of these change a male into a female, of course. Along with opposite sex hormones and testosterone suppression, they just change appearance. And, they involve sterilization and surgery on completely healthy tissues.
Surgical procedures on girls and women include face and body masculinization, mastectomies, hysterectomies, and – rarely for women – genital surgery to look male. Hysterectomies on healthy young women cause permanent sterility, and, with male hormones and estrogen suppression, such “surgical treatments” only change appearance.
While transgender-identified activists and their allies claim that “puberty blockers are reversible,” this is far from the truth. Using such experimental drugs on children can affect brain development, limit growth, and lead to osteoporosis later in life.
Giving opposite sex hormones and performing surgeries on adolescents and teens is also not reversible, permanently altering a child’s brain and body. One doctor who is heavily invested in prescribing these drugs and procedures is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles (CHLA), one of the oldest and largest transgender youth clinics in the United States.
Married to a woman who lives as a man, Olson-Kennedy studied girls as young as 13 who had mastectomies. She callously told a group that adolescents make similar big decisions all the time and that breast removal is no big deal. “And here’s the other thing about chest surgery,” she stated, “If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”
Physicians are deliberately harming children and teens. As FPA says “Whatever the cause [of sexual identity confusion], one thing is crystal clear: a child who believes she must alter her body in order to be comfortable in it is a child who is deeply hurting.”
“The last thing we should do?” FPA writes, “Hurt her even more.”
Related articles and resources:
The Daily Citizen
- Arkansas Legislature Overrides Veto to Protect Gender-Confused Children from Experimental ‘Sex Change’ Procedures
- ACLU Sues Arkansas Over Law Protecting Gender-Confused Children
- Hospitals and Doctors “Transition” Hundreds of Children with Drugs, Hormones and Surgery
- Planned Parenthood Finds Another Group to Harm – People Struggling with Sexual Identity Confusion
Family Policy Alliance
- Help Not Harm
- Press statement: Help Not Harm: A National Child Safety Campaign
- #HelpNotHarm Petition
Focus on the Family
- Counseling for Sexual Identity Concerns: A Measured, Careful, and Compassionate approach
- Talking to Your Children About Transgender Issues
- Transgender Resources
- When Transgender Issues Enter Your World: How Christians can respond with compassion, courage and truth
Photo from Twitter.