‘Our Side Has Science. Their Side Has Anecdotes.’
Nobody said puberty was easy. But it is necessary, Dr. Quentin Van Meter told Alabama legislators. He’s practiced medicine for decades and, like a lot of doctors, can’t believe that people are willing to throw pediatric science out the window just to satisfy a handful of transgender activists. After so many years treating kids, he says, it really is “hard to swallow.”
Nobody said puberty was easy. But it is necessary, Dr. Quentin Van Meter told Alabama legislators. He’s practiced medicine for decades and, like a lot of doctors, can’t believe that people are willing to throw pediatric science out the window just to satisfy a handful of transgender activists. After so many years treating kids, he says, it really is “hard to swallow.”
And it’s basically come out of nowhere. On “Washington Watch" Tuesday, I talked to Dr. Van Meter about how society has embraced this agenda almost overnight. Twenty years ago, when I was in the Louisiana legislature serving on the Health and Welfare Committee, if you’d have put a measure in front of me protecting underage kids from transgender surgery and hormones, I’d have fallen out of my chair. Dr. Van Meter, who’s practiced pediatric endocrinology for 46 years, has never seen anything like it.
"There’s no reason behind [it] other than it’s sort of a train rolling on a track very fast at warp speed.” It used to be, he said, that gender confusion affected about six out of 100,000 adult males and three out of 100,000 adult females. “It’s now estimated,” Van Meter explained, “to be in 1.5 percent of the population of kids across the country today.” “It’s sort of a cult phenomenon,” he insisted, fueled by “Internet access and hysteria. Now, a child who’s "miserable in middle school or [adolescence] for any number of reasons we were all miserable when we grew up” are being given “bright, shiny object that promises them extensive amounts of happiness and success — when in truth, that’s not what it really is. So it’s a shiny object that draws attention and draws these kids into a state of making decisions that they should not be able to make.”
Van Meter made that argument in Alabama, one of the many states considering a ban on gender reassignment surgery and hormones for kids. Together with FRC’s Peter Sprigg, he was pleased with the reaction to the testimony. “Our side really presented beautiful science. Their side presented anecdotes. And [the] legislators could see that clearly. The science is on the side of this issue.” In fact, he went on:
“There is no science at all that says [transgender treatment for children] is safe or effective over the long run because we haven’t been doing it long enough, and there are no control groups. This is an experiment on children without any ethical framework in which to do it — something that’s an anathema to those of us that do clinical research and are very careful about clinical practices that protect our patients from experimentation.”
But unfortunately, he warns, this campaign to lock kids into a lifetime of pain and misery has tremendous financial backing. “The LGBT community has embraced this, even when it’s essentially harmful to those who might end up being same-sex attracted instead of transgender. It’s almost as if this is an alternate track that has medical and surgical harms attached to it that are just unfathomable in terms of the outcomes. And so we’re compounding the injury… It’s the strangest coalition, but it is very powerful.”
Your voice, fortunately, is just as powerful. If you live in a state that’s considering protections like Alabama’s, make sure to weigh in. South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, and Georgia are all racing to respond to the cult that’s destroying our kids. For more information on the truth behind the debate taking America by storm, check out FRC’s “Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement.” Or to study up on what could be happening in your child’s classroom, be sure to read, “A Parent’s Guide to the Transgender Movement in Education.”
Originally published here.
Abortion: Regulate Than Never
A lot will be said about which way the Supreme Court might swing on the biggest abortion debate of the year. But it was out of an unlikely justice’s mouth that the most profound question may have been asked. “How do [we] deal with this?” For Justice Stephen Breyer, even 24 years on the court don’t offer a clear answer. “I have read the briefs. I understand there are good arguments on both sides.” In a country where people have “very strong feelings” about abortion, days like this, he admitted, are difficult. Maybe, some of us thought sitting there in the Supreme Court chamber, because the court shouldn’t be deciding these issues to begin with.
“I think, personally, the Court is struggling with the problem of what kind of rule of law do you have in a country that contains both sorts of people," Breyer said honestly. The people who think abortion is morally wrong — and the people who believe the opposite. It was a surprising moment of candor from the 81-year-old justice. In many ways, it was confirmation of what so many Americans believe: that we should be trying to find legislative solutions on life, not court-created policy.
Of course, that’s exactly what the Louisiana legislature tried to do. Now, six years later, they’re having to defend a law that was democratically passed — all because a money-hungry abortion industry can’t spare a cent on the safety of women. The state isn’t asking for much. It isn’t trying to overturn Roe v. Wade or put abortion centers out of business. All Louisiana’s done is treat abortion doctors like medical doctors and require them to have a back-up plan if something goes wrong — which, we know from as recently as March, it does. Nothing about that should be controversial for a business that’s spent the last several years insisting it cares about women.
But, it turns out, the abortion industry isn’t willing to put its policies where its mouth is. They’ve gone to great expense, suing every state that tries to bring these "clinics” in line with any other outpatient surgery center. In this case, abortion activists are arguing that hospital admitting privileges are never necessary — despite so many horrifying stories to the contrary. Jeffrey Wall, from the Justice Department, pushed back on the idea that just because botched abortions are rare doesn’t mean precautions aren’t necessary.
“The medical director at Hope,” he reminded them, “has said that he has, on occasion, had a patient who develops a problem like a perforated uterus and [must be] admitted into the hospital [to be] treated. Now, granted, we don’t know how often it happens and, Justice Kagan, I’m prepared to concede that it may not happen all that often. I don’t think anybody knows the real rate. But the point is that it does happen. And when it does it’s very serious.”
Wall also took aim at the plaintiffs challenging the law. After all, he pointed out, these are abortion activists trying to say they’re arguing on behalf of women when “their interests are not necessarily aligned.” The abortion industry is driven by profit, and women are driven by “health and safety.” In other words, how can abortionists say they’re looking out for women when they’re fighting the laws designed to protect them? It was a powerful argument, one that I hope the Court will take seriously. States ought to have the right to regulate abortion clinics, especially when they’ve proven time and time again how insincerely they take women’s health.
Twenty years ago, as a Louisiana legislator, I heard one shocking testimony after another of women who’d been treated with rusty, blood-encrusted instruments. I listened to the employees talk about doctors roughing up women and then refusing to call 911. It’s why a young Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) and I worked so hard to pass the first abortion clinic regulations in the country — to stop these doctors from operating in filthy, disgusting conditions. If they won’t hold themselves accountable, then it’s up to this Court to decide if anyone can.
For more on the stakes of the Supreme Court case, check out my Washington Times op-ed with Congressman Mike Johnson. And for more on my observations from inside oral arguments, don’t miss Wednesday’s edition of “Washington Watch.”
Originally published here.
The Democrats’ Super Choose Day
If Joe Biden’s big comeback says anything, it’s this: Super Tuesday wasn’t about who the Democrats wanted. It was about who they didn’t. After weeks of wringing their hands over the very real possibility that an avowed socialist could win the nomination, the party embraced the former vice president. Not out of enthusiasm, most people are quick to point out. But out of necessity.
“It’s been a remarkable journey back to the top,” Michael Goodwin acknowledges, “but Biden couldn’t have done it without [Senator Bernie] Sanders — or rather the fear of Sanders that swept the Democratic establishment like a virus and spurred it to action.” The liberal media accepted the tradeoff, but reluctantly. Outlets like the New York Times didn’t hide their frustration at the party’s predicament, warning that Obama’s second-in-command is “no safer with a microphone, no likelier to complete a thought without exaggeration or bewildering detour.” They, like most of the Left, are under no illusions that Biden is a safe bet. If the goal is keeping a socialist off the ticket, though, he’ll have to do.
But even with his delegate total, there’s no guarantee that the man who called Tuesday “Super Thursday” and accidentally said he was a candidate for the “United States Senate” can pull it off. Voters who watched him mangle the Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing” — have to be wondering, like Fox’s Brit Hume, “[Is he] senile? Or getting there?” Even Politico couldn’t help pointing out that even as the party rallies around Biden, it was “perhaps fitting” that as he took the stage Tuesday night to celebrate, “the first thing he did was accidentally confuse his wife and sister.”
But Biden’s mistakes don’t compare to the one voters are making by believing he’s a moderate. This isn’t the second coming of Barack Obama or even Hillary Clinton. This is a radically aggressive campaign that is only marginally more sane than Bernie Sanders’s. “On nearly every major issue, Biden has either exponentially increased the scope of what Clinton proposed or advocated for new ideas that most Democrats would have up until recently considered fringe,” McClatchy’s Alex Roarty warned. “Many Democrats see Joe Biden as a voice of ideological restraint in a party rapidly moving to the Left,” he wrote. They’re wrong.
This is a man who said his first act as president would be sticking a dagger into the heart of religious freedom! Biden’s biggest priority, he told a roomful of HRC supporters, is signing the Equality Act — a bill that hunts down and punishes anyone who thinks differently from the Left on gender or sexuality. And that includes schools, parents, businesses, food banks, adoption agencies, homeless shelters, day cares, faith-based ministries, and government offices. If you can imagine a country without women’s sports, boys’ and girls’ restrooms, gender-specific pronouns, parental rights, medical ethics, workplace dress codes, the free market, Christian wedding vendors, and conscience protections — you’ve got Joe Biden’s to-do list. We’re talking about a president who would literally drive faith underground.
On abortion, the vice president is so extreme that he wouldn’t just allow abortion right up to the moment of birth — he’d order you to pay for it! And millions of abortions the world over. The one-time defender of the Hyde amendment traded his 40 years of integrity for the support of groups like Planned Parenthood last year — ending any veneer of rationality. From there, he swore to appoint only rabid abortion activists to the bench and bulldoze every state pro-life law.
He would open the border to illegal immigrants, pay for their health care (and their abortions), recommit us to the Paris climate treaty, hike taxes by $2.3 trillion (“well to the Left of Obama”), pursue a health care plan some are calling “Obamacare on steroids,” and declare war on the Second Amendment. When his policies aren’t attacking Americans, he is — calling conservatives “the dregs of society,” “a virulent people.”
Politics, the New York Times admits, is about options. And when it comes to mainstream candidates, the Democrats have none. “Walking 900 paces to the Left when your opponents are walking a thousand does not make you a moderate,” Fitsnews wisely noted. “It makes you exactly what Biden has lamentably become: Ever-so-slightly-less-fringe than the fringe candidates he is campaigning against.”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
