Gender-Affirming Healthcare for Minors

Last updated on: September 10, 2024 at 10:47 am by Arguay-Wenner M.A.

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Gender-Affirming Healthcare for Minors 2024-09-10T10:47:27-04:00 Arguay-Wenner M.A.

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“Allowing children to transition into adulthood naturally.”

At first glance, the term “gender-affirming healthcare” sounds quite innocuous. Nevertheless, much of gender-affirming healthcare is anything but gentle. Gender-affirming healthcare for adolescents includes a range of services like social affirmations, puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery. Not to mention many doctor visits for the rest of one’s lifetime. Although human beings, especially adults, have free will to do as they may, changing one’s sex is contrary to the law of nature. Man and wo-man were made to procreate and populate the earth. Recently scholars, journalists, and the LGBTQ community have expressed their thoughts about gender-affirming healthcare.

The mystery of puberty. We have all been there. Every one of us. It’s the phase of life that challenges and changes us. It’s a time of hormonal, physical, and psychological upheaval. It’s also a time of confusion, depression, anger, and curious sexual feelings. The culprit? The dreaded puberty. Albeit as uncomfortable as it is, puberty is inevitable. It’s the time when one is called to mature into early adulthood.

Queer activist and disability scholar Eli Clare, a supporter of the gender credo, writes on the history of hormone therapy. He tells us that the United States has a history of administering hormones and puberty blockers to our youth. He also states that hormone therapies have been prescribed to what we now call “cisgender” children for the last seven decades. Clare also tells us parents often intentionally stunted the growth of their disabled children who were incapable of being responsible adults. Hormone therapies were also prescribed to boys for being too short and girls for being too tall. Therefore, Clare proclaims hormone therapy for children is nothing new in the United States. Be that as it may, administering hormones and puberty blockers to children to change their biological sex still has long-term irreversible and consequential effects.

That said, ordinary folks typically do not see or hear what happens behind the scenes of those who are financing LGBTQ gender-affirming healthcare, marketing campaigns, laws and movements. For one, it takes an unfathomable amount of money to support and generate such movements. Thus far, more than $420 million has been put forth to fund gender-affirming health care and the new gender ideology. The transgender movement is funded by the US government, philanthropists and large corporations. Jennifer Prizker a billionaire and retired National Guard Lieutenant hails from a very influential Jewish family and is just one who funds the LGBTQ marketplace such as the LGBTQ line in Target. In addition, Prizker provides capital to gender clinics, hospitals and training doctors in surgical procedures.

Peggy of Troy

Peggy of Troy, New York as Hermaphroditus
LGBTQ Themes in Mythology

Millions of dollars are used to educate and prepare doctors to perform gender-reassignment surgery. Not to mention, doctors are continually being trained on how to perform womb transplants so transgender men can conceive children. And doctors are continuously practicing gender-affirming surgery on animals and attending cadaver symposiums all over the world to perfect their craft.

Consequently, to divide the LGBTQ schema from transgender matters, more specifically the issue of children and gender-affirming healthcare, is a daunting task as many changes are happening in such a short period of time. Man-made laws regulating the use of new language in addition to new gender and changing one’s original sex at birth are real, and it’s only the beginning. We should all know by now we have a box on federal forms to choose “other genders” rather than just choosing the traditional male or female check box.

Douglas Murray, a NY Post journalist feels that those who support and engage in the transgender movement are as “Mad as a Hatter”. It’s clear that Murray is against gender-affirming healthcare for children and takes the new gender ideology quite seriously. He quotes that gender-affirming healthcare for children is “child butchery”. His explanation of surgical procedures for transitioning is not for the faint of heart.

Also, Murray describes gender-affirming procedures in detail for girls and boys. Firstly, gender-affirming healthcare consists of drugs to stop breast development, hair growth and penis development. Surgery can consist of removing breasts and a double mastectomy. For female to male transitioning surgery involves peeling the skin from the arm to create a penis, and for male to female the penis is split into two to create a faux vagina. For certain, surgeries can cause infertility, infections, urination issues and years if not a lifetime of doctor visits, cancer and early onset osteoporosis in young adults.

Last but certainly not least, the Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement in 2023 requesting that all Catholic hospitals and providers ban transgender medical treatment in their facilities. Critics of the Bishops doctrine like Craig Ford Jr an assistant professor of Theology at St. Norbert College advocates for gender-affirming healthcare and states that the bishops’ doctrine lacks humility. He also proclaims we should listen more to the transgender community because they are declaring that “the natural world that God created is very complex”.

Micheal Sennett, a transgender man who works for the archdiocese in Boston, M.A. maintains that “Transgender people have existed since the beginning of time and we won’t cease to exist,”. Sennet and others believe that documents like the new statement made by the US Catholic Bishops promotes discrimination and is making life more difficult for the Transgender folks. Research suggests that LGBTQ people have existed for thousands of years. LGBTQ themes are found in many cultures in folklore and mythology. Gods like Hermaphrodites in Greek mythology and Inari Okami in Japanese folklore are depicted as transgender. Regardless of the historic proof of transgenderism it still does not make gender-affirming healthcare for children or young adults safe or right.

I ask parents and young adults to do their own research about the transgender movement, puberty, crisis of identity, dysphoria and gender ideology before you make any significant choices regarding your or your child’s sex or gender. Gender-affirming healthcare may be necessary in a few select cases but transgender medical treatments, especially surgery can physically and mentally damage an adolescent in later adulthood. We should pray to God about such life altering changes and wait patiently for the answer. That being said we should put God first in everything we do. Especially where our children’s physical, emotional and spiritual health is concerned.

1 Cor 6:19-20 (NIV) states that, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”

To read the bishop’s statement regarding gender-affirming healthcare please click on the link. Doctrinal Note 2023-03-20.pdf (usccb.org)