On Tuesday, Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) signed a bill to prohibit the practice of prescribing puberty blockers — a process known to many as chemical castration — to children under 18 years of age. In addition, the new law also bans surgeries to remove body parts from children in the name of “gender affirmation.”
With the new law, dubbed the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act,” Idaho joins a number of states — including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia — in protecting children from these dangerous procedures.
Little explained his decision in a letter to Idaho Speaker of the House Mike Moyle:
In signing this bill, I recognize our society plays a role in protecting minors from surgeries or treatments that can irreversibly damage their healthy bodies. However, as policymakers we should take great caution whenever we consider allowing the government to interfere with loving parents and their decisions about what is best for their children.
This bill is aptly named the Vulnerable Child Protection Act because it seeks to protect children with gender dysphoria from medical and surgical interventions that can cause permanent damage to their bodies before they are mature enough to make such serious health decisions.
Doctors who violate the new law could face up to 10 years in prison. The new law is set to take effect next January.
Opponents of the new law were predictably outraged. House Assistant Minority Leader Lauren Necochea, a Democrat, said she was “furious and heartbroken” over Little’s decision to sign the law. She raged:
He just took away the rights of loving parents to make medical decisions for their children and criminalized treatments proven to reduce suicidality among transgender youth. Governor Little just signed away the rights of loving parents to access the medical care they choose for their children. His decision criminalizes treatments proven to reduce suicidality, anxiety, and depression among transgender youth.
This legislation harms our vulnerable kids the most. It also hurts entire communities. Our friends and neighbors will be driven out of state. The continued criminalization of standard care endorsed by major medical associations will push more doctors to leave Idaho.
Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln of Add the Words, Idaho, a far-left LGBT activist group, claimed that “parental rights” were “being dismantled” with the new law.
“We are heartbroken for the families of Idaho today. We are watching parental rights being dismantled in the name of stigmatizing and harming our most vulnerable youth,” Gaona-Lincoln said in a statement.
“Governor Little is supposed to be a champion and defender of parental rights, especially when overseeing the medical decisions of our children,” she added. “His signing of this bill flies in the face of those supposed values.”
But others claim that the use of puberty blockers and genital mutilation aren’t even addressing the real problem when looking at the youth transgender phenomena.
“Gender-confused children need real help, not medically unnecessary drugs and procedures that result in lifelong harms,” said Blaine Conzatti of the Idaho Family Policy Center. “We’re grateful that Gov. Brad Little fulfilled his responsibility to protect vulnerable children struggling with gender dysphoria.”
In a statement, Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project agreed with Conzatti:
It is encouraging to see lawmakers nationwide taking action to protect children from the predatory transgender industry. The vast majority of Americans recognize that children are too young to consent to these procedures, which will have permanent, potentially destructive consequences for their long-term health. It is a massive scandal that such “treatments” are being offered at all, and legislators are fully justified in putting a stop to it.
When adults make the dangerous decision to undergo risky transgender medical procedures, there is a tendency to shrug one’s shoulders and just accept it. But with children, who are sometimes being peddled transgender propaganda in schools, the answer isn’t as clear. As cases of transgender regret continue to grow, the wisdom of allowing children to undergo such procedures is definitely in question.
Consider the case of Chloe Cole, who became convinced that she was a male when she was 12 years old, began taking puberty blockers at 13, and received a double mastectomy at age 15. Less than a year later, Cole believed that she’d made a mistake — an irreversible mistake. Now, she receives backlash from former supporters for even discussing her regret.
For the transgender movement only one thing is true. Their own subjective reality is true, and any objective investigation of transgenderism and regret of making those decisions — especially when it concerns children — is an act of bigotry.
That’s why states such as Idaho are right to step up to protect children from this dangerous and anti-human ideology.
