Linda Harvey
I have a dream.
In my dream, hundreds of parents, doctors, counselors, and pastors are protesting outside children’s hospitals throughout America.
They keep protesting, not just for one day, but for months.
They march in front of Lurie Children’s in Chicago, Boston Children’s, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital, Nationwide Children’s in Columbus, Cincinnati Children’s, Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and unfortunately, many, many others.
Through faces of anguish, outrage and determination, the spirit of truth prevails. They carry signs with messages like these:
- “Stop mutilating young bodies!”
- “Your white coats hide black hearts!”
- “Gender ‘change’ is impossible! Stop the abuse!”
- “Keep Big Pharma hormones out of my child’s body!”
- “Malpractice suits ahead-- stop the gender train!”
I dream of siblings who will bravely carry placards reading, “You took my sister away. She’s not my brother!” and other signs offered by furious de-transitioners: “I want my body back!”
It’s time for America to wake up and object to the mutilation of children’s bodies, minds and spirits as “transgender” clinics betray exploding numbers of teens and children.
Why such a surge in demand? A growing audience is responding as American consumers often do: buy the latest, heavily marketed product, regardless of safety or one’s actual need.
Hundreds of children and teens every day are now convinced they need to transform into the opposite sex, and some parents accompany them like cattle into the slaughterhouse, where there has emerged quite suddenly only one standard of care—say “yes” to the myth of “transition” and quickly prescribe drugs to shut down normal body processes or assault others.
How did we get here? And how can we reclaim the pediatrics profession from the primitive witch doctors and activists leading this retreat into barbarism?
We can first look to the UK, where some brave people are standing up to expose the lunacy. Five clinicians resigned a few months ago from the Tavistock Clinic in London over the unneeded treatment of children as young as three in what they called an “unregulated experiment.” That clinic’s patient volume rose from 94 in 2010 to 2519 in 2018.
Once upon a time, when children were confused about gender, doctors adopted a “watchful waiting” protocol, knowing that the child’s confusion might be caused by trauma, unresolved emotional issues, other developmental struggles or family problems. There was reluctance to rush into prescribing puberty blockers to be followed by opposite sex hormones and then, mutilating surgery, all severe treatments with lifetime implications.
Infertility. Loss of bone mass. Unpredictable mood swings. Future heart disease, stroke and cancer risks. And a continuing risk of suicide, because the real problems usually remain unaddressed.
Some observers point to an article published in 2013 that went a long way toward radically re-directing the former medical “best practice” of careful evaluation and watchful waiting. The new approach urged “affirmation,” given immediately. Start medical treatment ASAP, treating the child’s desire as equivalent to reality.
The problem is, of course, reality itself.
The authors of this article are not just dispassionate, objective health professionals. They are hard-core activists. Some are “LGBT” identifiers themselves.
The eight authors are Marco Hidalgo, Ph.D., Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital; Amy Tishelman, Ph.D.,Boston Children’s Hospital; Leslie F. Clark, Ph.D., MPH, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; Robert Garafalo, M.D., MPH, Lurie Children’s Hospital Chicago; Stephen Rosenthal, MD, San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital; Norman P. Spack, M.D.,Boston Children’s Hospital; and Johanna Olson, M.D., Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, who is now Joanna Olson-Kennedy, “married” to a female-to-male “transgender.”
Ehrensaft is on the board of the radical group, Gender Spectrum. Tishelman is also active with that group as well as with the extreme international “trans” medical pressure group, WPATH. Garafolo is past president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. Olson-Kennedy has received awards from the Stonewall Democratic Club and Equality California. Spack opened the first gender clinic for children in the U.S. in 2007 and boasts about this “accomplishment.”
Do these sound like independent medical researchers to you?
And yet four of them (Rosenthal, Garafalo, Spack and Olson-Kennedy) recently received a grant for a research study from National Institutes of Health to measure the “progress “of gender confused youth taking these potent, unneeded medications. This study is already being promoted, ahead of its completion, as the magic wand to dispel any concerns about the medical mutilation of children in the name of sexual anarchy.
Just a couple of gigantic problems. Researcher bias is almost guaranteed. And this study has no control group. The only subjects are kids who are currently taking puberty blockers/opposite sex hormones.
So what are the chances the investigators will uncover disturbing findings and disclose them? “Wait!! Stop!! Gender reassignment is a huge hoax and is inflicting severe, permanent harm to vulnerable children! We can no longer condone the misuse of drugs assaulting healthy children’s bodies to achieve a nonsensical goal.”
And maybe then revert back to the time-honored “waiting” protocol, because it usually works. In 85-90% of the cases, children resolve their distress by adulthood and accept their biological sex.
Will these researchers backtrack? Will Nancy Pelosi become a conservative Republican?
Jane Robbins at The Public Discourse has written about this NIH study in detail with many valuable insights.
What makes highly educated people go this direction—to ruin children’s bodies and lives while believing they are doing good?
As already mentioned, many are close allies with “LGBT” groups and individuals. The other issue may be money.
The NIH study mentioned above is $5.7 million for five years. Hmm… not bad for studying 250 kids to come to a forgone conclusion.
And then there’s the exploding market. These clinics are among the latest profit centers for hospitals with many services not covered by insurance. It’s a cash cow, and the pharmaceutical companies producing the puberty blockers and hormone medications love the new market for older drugs. Are there financial incentives for docs and hospitals that prescribe their medications?
Of course there are.
But then, there’s another group, one that can give us all hope, one with more sense, motivated by the breathtaking betrayal of modern medicine.
Parents. Many of them have joined together to fight gender change “affirmation” and its horrific aftermath. One such group is the Kelsey Coalition.
Others are loosely aligned groups of young de-transitioners who went through these treatments and have deep regrets.
When will the mainstream media finally decide to blow the lid off this abuse?
Who knows, but in the meantime, those of us who do know must keep talking, writing, exposing this evil.
And praying.
