Gender-affirming care for transgender kids in America is on the line.
The debate over its safety and merits drew Capitol Hill attention Thursday at a hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.
Political rhetoric on both sides of the aisle spewed in Washington D.C. as families across the nation navigated how to move around state laws banning or limiting transgender healthcare.
The subcommittee’s “Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children” hearing comes at a time when several states are passing legislation to inhibit the rights of transgender youth.
In a dramatic opening focusing on genital surgeries for adolescents, Committee Chairman and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) played a video of a podcast interview of Dr. Blair Peters, known as the Queer Surgeon, from the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who talked about the surgeries he performs on adolescents.
In response to the video, Johnson said Peters “boasts about the shocking, fully-experimental, irreversible and life-altering invasive procedures that he and others are performing on children to surgically modify their genitals.”
The Human Rights Campaign challenged those claims ahead of the hearing and slammed the Committee for its plan to “continue embarking on a reckless, unprecedented misinformation campaign to justify harmful policies to prevent transgender children from being able to access important and lifesaving healthcare.”
The group cited recent surveys from The Trevor Project that show “transgender youth with access to gender-affirming hormone therapy have lower rates of depression and are at a lower risk for suicide” and another from the National Center for Transgender Equality that shows “only 3% of respondents have detransitioned permanently at some point.”
Who said what at the hearing?
At the beginning of the hearing, Johnson went on to call the video of Peters “absolutely nightmare-ish and “surreal to hear the description of what these people are doing to the bodies of young children,”
He called the procedures “barbarism,” and said it “should be prohibited by our law.”
“This so-called gender-affirming care is anything but affirming and caring, and the language matters,” he said. “This is adults deciding to permanently alter the bodies of children who do not have the capacity to make life-altering decisions on their own.”
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Quickly backfiring on Johnson’s remarks, Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania) said: “Congress has no business interfering in parents’ freedom to make decisions about appropriate medical care for their children.”
“It is a cynical and dangerous political attack on transgender children and their families,” she said. “It is not driven by science or facts, but by polling and political strategists determined to mobilize conservative voters through fear.”
“Gender-affirming care is safe and effective,” said Scanlon. “It is supported by every major medical association, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others, representing over 1.3 million American doctors.”
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At the hearing, Johnson also said “sex isn’t something you are assigned at birth” and attacked the “transgender movement.”
“What is even more alarming is that the central tenant of the transgender movement and its allies is to exclude parents as much as possible from making decisions about the health of their own children,” he said. “Medical professionals and schools increasingly see parents as quote transphobic bullies who must be prevented from standing in the way of the medical sexual transition of their own kids.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, on Thursday shared a message of support with transgender people during the hearing.
“I insist on pronouncing today: your life is worth it,” Lee said. “Your son’s life is worth it. Your daughter’s life is worth it. However they are transitioning, and as they live their life. And I plea and beg for those who might be listening, know that we do not believe that this is a question for this committee.
“I will not sit here and allow the trans community to be abused, and in essence to be rejected and for someone somewhere, let me say, your life is worthwhile,” she added.
Contributing: Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.