A Texas District Judge has issued an injunction against allowing the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) investigating parents who allow their children to receive so-called gender affirming treatments for child abuse. District Judge Amy Clark Meachum ruled on Friday against Governor Greg Abbott’s directive of February 22, that DFPS “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures” to protect children from such abuse.
Judge Meachum claimed that there was a “substantial likelihood” that lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal, an organization promoting LGBTQ rights, will ultimately prevail in their fight against Abbott’s directive and claimed that Abbott’s directive was “beyond the scope of his duty and unconstitutional.”
Since Abbott issued the directive, no less than nine investigations have been opened into families that have allowed their minor children to go through these often-irreversible procedures and therapies that are meant to alter the appearance of children so that they outwardly look like the opposite sex.
Abbott’s directive was based on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s opinion that the parents who allow these procedures and the physicians and clinics who engage in them may be guilty of child abuse.
Paxton was specifically asked by Representative Matt Krause, a Republican, whether the following procedures being performed on an otherwise healthy child could be considered child abuse under Texas law: “sterilization through castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, and vaginoplasty; mastectomies; and removing from children otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue.”
Krause also asked if “providing, administering, prescribing, or dispensing drugs to children that induce transient or permanent infertility” constitutes child abuse. Among those drug “therapies” were puberty-suppression or puberty-blocking drugs; supraphysiologic doses of testosterone to females, or supraphysiologic doses of estrogen to males.
Paxton concluded, “Based on the analysis herein, each of the ‘sex change’ procedures and treatments enumerated above, when performed on children, can legally constitute child abuse,” which prompted Abbott to issue the directive.
Meachum claimed that Abbott’s directive to DFPS had all the effect of a new law or agency rule “despite no new legislation, regulation or even stated agency policy.” The lawsuit from the ACLU and Lambda Legal names Abbott and the DFPS as defendants and claims that the investigations risk “tearing families apart.”
“No family should have to fear being torn apart because they are supporting their trans child,” said Adri Pérez, a policy and advocacy strategist for the Texas ACLU. “Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a partisan political attack that isn’t rooted in the needs of families, the evidence from doctors and the expertise from child welfare professionals.”
Of course, that depends on which doctors and child-welfare professionals one asks. Just throwing surgeries and hormones at children is probably not the way to go according to Sue Evans, a former nurse at the Tavistock Clinic in London, which is famous for its gender-reassignment surgeries. According to Evans, mental-health problems, which are often related to gender dysphoria, are often set aside in favor of quick treatment to change gender quickly.
“It’s worth re-emphasising the importance of not separating gender dysphoria from other aspects of a person’s mental functioning, since many of the young people who present with gender incongruence have co-morbid problems,” Evans wrote. “The denial of the psychological factors influencing the desire to transition can unwittingly lead the patient and health professionals to embrace concrete, affirmative solutions, while ignoring relevant aspects of the individual’s mental-health situation and personal history.”
It’s wrong to simply assume that parents have done everything for their so-called transgender children and have their best interests in mind, which is probably why Paxton and Abbott have called for investigations into such situations. If parents are allowing their healthy children to be castrated, have hysterectomies and mastectomies without therapy, there is indeed a problem. And as Paxton and Abbott are saying, that problem may indeed be child abuse.
