Over the past week, two friends of MFI have made national headlines for boldly telling the truth about transgenderism’s devastating impact on children.  Walt Heyer (whose testimony before the MA legislature last month can be viewed here) published an article in the Federalist this week highlighting the tragic case of a sixth-grade girl who committed suicide shortly after “transitioning” to a boy.  The parents, who were very supportive of the transition and the hormonal injections that went with it, remain convinced they were doing the right thing.  That is at least in part because the medical and educational establishment unhesitatingly promoted this delusion and the largely untested treatments that went with it.  However, as Heyer points out in his article, “[d]octors admit they do not know which children will remain gender dysphoric into adulthood, yet they condone gender identity change, socially and medically, for youth. This is child abuse…  It’s child abuse to tell a child he or she can select a gender. It is a false hope.”

Heyer, who himself had a sex-change operation and lived as a woman for years before transitioning back, calls this “gender make believe,” the effect of which is “the destruction of core identity.”  He says it “plants the notion inside the minds of young people that the essence of who they are is wrong. They are not someone to be loved or embraced, but eradicated. Affirming someone as the opposite gender reinforces the deep discomfort already undermining his or her identity. Overwhelmed by the weight of these messages cloaked as ‘affirmation’ and a lack of attention to the real issues driving their desire to switch gender appearances, 45 percent attempt suicide. Anyone playing this ‘select-a-gender’ game with children is complicit in turning young psyches against themselves and the factual truth of who they really are.”  I encourage you to read the full article here.

Fortunately, not ALL doctors are complicit in this medical child abuse of “gender make believe.”  I’ve had the privilege recently of working with Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, against the MA Counseling Ban bill.  She also has an excellent article out this week in the Daily Signal that I strongly encourage you to read.  As a pediatrician, she witnessed that “transgender ideology has infiltrated [her] field and produced large-scale child abuse.”  Many of her colleagues are now “using the myth that people are born transgender to justify engaging in massive, uncontrolled, and unconsented experimentation on children who have a psychological condition that would otherwise resolve after puberty in the vast majority of cases.  Today’s institutions that promote transition affirmation are pushing children to impersonate the opposite sex, sending many of them down the path of puberty blockers, sterilization, the removal of healthy body parts, and untold psychological damage.  These harms constitute nothing less than institutionalized child abuse.”

I am excited to tell you that Dr. Cretella will be on Fox News with Tucker Carlson this Friday at 8 p.m. Please pray for her and her message of sanity on this issue.

For our families,