As commentator Dennis Prager often notes, truth is not a left-wing value. The Left pays homage to the higher value of accomplishing its agenda, by whatever means necessary, and any lie that advances the agenda is justifiable for the greater good. This reality is starkly apparent in the realm of transgender ideology – and it’s playing out in the California legislature.
A committee in the state Senate recently passed a bill designated AB 2218, which would establish a Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund to finance medical interventions for trans-identifying individuals. Such interventions could include puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones (testosterone for females, estrogen for males), and mutilating surgeries such as mastectomies and castrations. The full Senate may vote later this month.
Opponents of the bill are marshaling public opposition by pointing out that AB 2218 would provide taxpayer funding to sterilize children. This claim is true. But the bill’s supporters have reacted to the resulting public outrage by simply denying the charge.
Bill sponsor Assemblyman Miguel Santiago testified at the Senate hearing that “nothing [in the bill] talks about sterilizing kids. Nothing, I will repeat, in this bill points to anything to do with children.” Senator Susan Rubio chimed in that she had read the bill “very, very carefully” but “didn’t find anything about sterilizing children.”
No, the word “sterilizing” doesn’t appear in the bill. But AB 2218 would fund “gender-affirming health care services, such as [but presumably not limited to] hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery.” Since puberty-blocking drugs are a standard part of gender clinics’ services, they could be funded as well. All of these interventions can lead to sterilization of children.
As the California Family Council has uncovered, the Transgender Care unit of the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center warns on its website that infertility is likely to result from chemical interventions: “For youth whose pubertal process has been suspended in the earliest stages [by puberty-blocking drugs], followed by administration of gender-affirming (sic) hormones, development of mature sperm or eggs is unlikely at the present time . . .” No sperm, no eggs, no fertility. The website warning continues: “While options are being explored to preserve future fertility for transgender youth, the current reality is that cryopreservation is very expensive, in many cases prohibitively so for those with ovaries” (known in the real world as “women” and “girls”).
UCSF is working with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) on a federal study to administer the kinds of interventions covered by AB 2218. The study’s patient consent forms warn that infertility is a likely outcome of the experimentation. (The risible claim that children are capable of consenting to lifelong sterility is discussed here and here.)
Boys’ “[t]aking feminizing medications after or while being on [puberty-blocking drugs] will likely lead to infertility,” CHLA states matter-of-factly. Among several listed reasons for this outcome is that “[s]perm will not mature . . . . and [t]he ability to make sperm normally may or may not come back even after stopping taking feminizing medication.”
What about girls who take puberty blockers and testosterone? “It is not known what the effects of testosterone are on fertility,” CHLA says. “If you started puberty blockers in the early stages of your puberty, then you will not have mature enough eggs to reproduce.” Whether stopping the drugs will restore the girl’s fertility is anybody’s guess.
In the consent form for parents of trans-identifying children, CHLA is blunt: “If your child starts puberty blockers in the earliest stages of puberty, and then goes on to gender affirming (sic) hormones, they (sic) will not develop sperm or eggs. This means they will not be able to have biological children.” Sign here, please.
So it’s beyond dispute that the interventions funded by AB 2218 can or will cause infertility. Maybe the leftist bill’s supporters are arguing, instead, that the funds will be used only for adult patients rather than children. But this isn’t true either. The bill states repeatedly that the resources will be used for trans-identifying “people” or “individuals” – nowhere limited to individuals 18 years of age or over. In fact, the “findings” section of the bill gives statistics about the number of “youth 12 to 17” who are viewed as gender-nonconforming. Why would this be in the bill if children weren’t covered?
Numerous physicians and other mental-health professionals have sounded the alarm about AB 2218, not only because it would advance sterilization of troubled children (and adults) but also because of other devastating physical and psychological consequences of these experimental interventions (see here, here, and here). This is not “fear-mongering,” as the radical bill supporters claim; it’s the undeniable truth.
But truth isn’t a left-wing value.