Parents of a 17-year-old girl lost custody of their daughter for opposing her wish for transgender medical treatments.
Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon of Hamilton County, Ohio has allowed the girl to be taken into the custody of her grandparents – who support her medical transition – allowing them to make decisions that will further along her physical transition to the opposite sex.
According to CNN, Hendon ordered that the family’s names not be released.
The parents reportedly continued to call their daughter by her given name, rather than a male name, and refused to consent to hormone treatments that were recommended by her medical team. The girl claimed she became suicidal as a result of her parents’ refusal to accept that she wanted to transition to a male.
“We think the grandparents are the ones who have an open mind and will … make this sort of decision best for the child,” said attorney Paul Hunt, who represents the court-appointed guardian ad litem. “The parents have clearly indicated that they’re not open to it.”
According to the news story, the parents argued their daughter was not “even close to being able to make such a life-altering decision at this time.” A county prosecutor, however, claimed the parents were opposed to their daughter transitioning to become a male because of their Christian religious beliefs.
Thomas Mellott, the girl’s attorney, said the teen was forced to attend a Catholic school where she had to wear dresses and use her birth name.
“It caused additional trauma and anxiety,” Mellott said. “When you lack all hope, and when [s]he thought this would all continue to happen to [her], the suicidal ideation became more pronounced, and that is how [s]he ended up where [s]he was.”
Karen Brinkman, attorney for the parents, however, argued:
If the maternal grandparents were to be given custody, it would simply be a way for the child to circumvent the necessity of parents’ consent. Parents believe custody of the child should be restored to them, so they can make the medical decisions they believe are in their child’s best interest until [the child] turns 18 years of age.
Hendon’s order allows the grandparents to petition to have their granddaughter’s name changed legally.
The ruling also requires the girl to be evaluated by a psychologist not associated with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the current treatment facility.
In her ruling, Hendon urged the Ohio state legislature to develop legislation to assist judges in evaluating a young person’s rights with regard to transgender treatments. Hendon wrote:
What is clear from the testimony presented in this case and the increasing worldwide interest in transgender care is that there is certainly a reasonable expectation that circumstances similar to the one at bar are likely to repeat themselves. That type of legislation would give a voice and a pathway to youth similarly situated as (the teen) without attributing fault to the parents and involving them in protracted litigation which can and does destroy a family unit.
Like the abortion industry – which has adopted the narrative that abortion is “women’s health care,” transgender activists are referring to prescribing hormone and surgical treatments for a gender-confused child as “transgender care.”
“This is a really critical time in a child’s life, and it can be frustrating for the process to take so long to help him,” said Corinne Green, policy coordinator for the Transgender Law Center, according to CNN. “There can be significant harm in delaying or withholding care of any kind.”
Nevertheless, Kaeley Triller, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle Woman’s Coalition, tweeted, “This is insane,” in response to the court’s ruling on Twitter:
Triller’s organization consists of women from all points on the political spectrum who have joined together to challenge the narrative that gender is the equivalent of biological sex.
According to the news report, in 2016, the girl was “diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder, and gender dysphoria.”
A recent study released by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) – in a state that is the first in the U.S. to adopt the LGBT rights agenda as part of a new history and social studies curriculum for children as young as the second grade – finds that gender “nonconforming” young people in California were more than twice as likely to have psychological problems than those comfortable with their biological sex.
According to the study, 17 percent of “gender nonconforming” respondents reported severe psychological distress, versus seven percent of “gender conforming” youth.
While the pro-LGBT UCLA study’s authors point to lack of acceptance of a young person’s chosen gender identity and victimization by family and others as primary causes of the psychological problems experienced by “gender nonconforming” young people, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) states that gender dysphoria, formerly called Gender Identity Disorder, in and of itself is a mental disorder.
“Over 90 percent of people who commit suicide have a diagnosed mental disorder, and there is no evidence that gender-dysphoric children who commit suicide are any different,” wrote Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), at the Daily Signal.
ACPeds is a national organization representing pediatricians and other healthcare professionals.
“Many gender dysphoric children simply need therapy to get to the root of their depression, which very well may be the same problem triggering the gender dysphoria,” Cretella continued, adding that, “even in Sweden, which is among the countries most accepting of LGBT individuals, adults who undergo sex change surgeries have a suicide rate nearly 20 times greater than that of the general population.”
“Clearly, sex reassignment is not the solution to gender dysphoria,” she wrote.
Nationwide, fewer than one in 2400 adults have changed their names from one sex to the other sex, according to a study of the 2010 census.