This coming week the Missouri Senate will again see floor debate on Senate Bill 49, legislation designed to protect children from dangerous cross-sex hormones and experimental surgeries.
Especially following the alarming whistleblower reports coming out of the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, this common-sense legislation should be an easy win for Missouri families and lawmakers. Senate Democrats, however, continue to block the bill’s path forward.
While left-wing radicals continue to mischaracterize this legislation, it is first important to understand what this law would do, if enacted.
Titled the “Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” this bill would prohibit physicians or other health care providers from providing “sex transition” procedures to minors. The legislation also provides safeguards for medically verifiable disorders of sex development that require medical attention, an important distinction in this highly-charged political debate.
Children, barely of school age, are being subjected to a questionable diagnosis of gender dysphoria that promotes surgeries and prescriptions for cross-sex hormones that are dangerous, life-altering and permanent. This fad-driven form of medical treatment on children is cruel and oftentimes leads to a lifetime of misery, pain and untreated mental illness.
It is wrong to assume everyone advocating for these surgeries and treatments is “doing it for the children.” In fact, providing pharmaceuticals and surgery for children suffering from gender confusion or dysphoria has become a very profitable industry. The surgeries and cross-sex hormone drugs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is designer science, scientifically and clinically unproven, and it is being used to target confused parents and vulnerable children for political purposes and for profit. What is certain, however, is that these children will suffer from lifelong medical dependencies that enrich pharmaceutical and medical service providers with little to show in terms of patient benefit.
In reality, after a so-called “sex reassignment” surgery, girls and boys are nearly 20 times more likely to die from suicide than the general population. Up to 98% of children who struggle with their sex as a boy or a girl come to accept their biological sex by adulthood.
The long-term effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have not been extensively studied. But it’s already clear they can lead to infertility and other irreversible harmful effects that must be dealt with as children mature.
The Missouri Senate is right to focus on protecting children’s health and safety, especially given the recent revelations of negligence, malfeasance, and coercion that have occurred at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. These so-called “transition services” that amputate or severely alter healthy body parts cause irreversible damage that impacts children for the rest of their lives.
Society does not allow minors to get tattoos, purchase cigarettes or vote in elections – we recognize that minors are not ready to make life-altering decisions. Why should children or coerced parents be permitted to allow these cross-sex hormones and surgeries unquestioningly?
Our children deserve quality care and protection from junk science. Body dysphoria, depression anxiety and the awkwardness of puberty are all real challenges that deserve compassion. But, we should not allow our children to be pushed into experimental surgeries and drugs by radical activist groups and rapacious corporations.
This is not a fringe or controversial position for Missouri legislators or citizens to take. All across the United States, state legislatures and governors are now taking a stand to prevent this horrific abuse of minors. Laws similar to Missouri’s SAFE Act have already passed in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, with other states such as Georgia and Indiana sure to follow.
Currently, at least 21 states are considering legislation.
Nationwide, parents are demanding the protection of their children from the predatory behaviors of radical school counselors and agenda-driven medical personnel. Missouri policy leaders must join this fight.
The Senate must allow the “Show Me” state to take the lead, and ensure that S.B. 49 sees whatever floor debate is required and pass it on for consideration by the House. Missouri’s kids deserve nothing less.
