Transgender ‘Equity’ Bill Could Fund Treatments Known to Cause Sterility in Children

A California Senate committee approved, 7-1, last week, a bill that would establish an “equity” fund that could be used for transgender medical interventions and surgeries, many of which are known to cause sterility in children.

To date, AB-2218 states it would:

[E]stablish the Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund … for the purpose of funding grants … to transgender-led (Trans-led) organizations and hospitals, health care clinics, and other medical providers that provide gender-conforming health care services and have an established partnership with a Trans-led organization, to create, or fund existing, programs focused on coordinating trans-inclusive health care, as defined, for people that identify as transgender, gender nonconforming, or intersex.

Attorney and researcher Jane Robbins wrote at Townhall Wednesday the bill “should alarm all Americans” because it could essentially finance puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, and castrations.

Citing a 2018 statement by the American College of Pediatricians, Robbins observed all of these medical interventions that could be funded by the measure “can lead to sterilization of children.”

She continued that, while the bill’s supporters are denying the legislation concerns the sterilization of children, the bill could 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,” she noted.

As California Family Council reported last week, the bill’s author, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D), complained about the uproar over concerns the treatments to be funded could result in the sterilization of children.

“Let me be very clear and get the record straight,” Santiago said. “Nothing, I will repeat, talks about sterilizing kids. Nothing, I will repeat, in this bill points to anything to do with children… I think it is fear-mongering and good for sound bites.”

However, the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, which touts its own Transgender Care Unit, has posted an article to its site titled, “Health Considerations for Gender Non-Conforming Children and Transgender Adolescents.”

The article’s authors, leaders in the transgender industry, stated that “youth are transitioning at increasingly younger ages,” and that “genital surgery is being performed on a case-by-case basis more frequently in minors.”

The authors then added:

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.

For youth whose pubertal process has been suspended in the earliest stages [by puberty-blocking drugs], followed by administration of gender-affirming hormones, development of mature sperm or eggs is unlikely at the present time … The issue of future infertility is often far more problematic for parents and family members than for youth, especially at the beginning stages of discussing moving forward with gender-affirming hormones.

As Robbins observed, UCSF is also working together with Children’ Hospital Los Angeles on a taxpayer-funded study, launched by the National Institutes of Health, that uses a consent form that warns prospective subjects that infertility is a probable consequence of participation.

After pointing out to the young participants in the study that the progression of hormonal drugs “will likely lead to infertility,” the researchers then address their parents.

“If your child starts puberty blockers in the earliest stages of puberty, and then goes on to gender affirming hormones, they will not develop sperm or eggs,” the consent form reads. “This means they will not be able to have biological children.”

“So it’s beyond dispute that the interventions funded by AB 2218 can or will cause infertility,” Robbins concluded.

In November, California-based endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw spoke with Breitbart News about medical interventions for children who claim to be transgender:

It’s really critical to understand that our medical organizations, beginning with the Endocrine Society and moving on to the Pediatric Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatricians, that with respect to this topic they have been taken over by the most radical elements. These radical trans activists were involved in writing the Endocrine Society guidelines in 2009 and 2017. These are low to no quality evidence guidelines, and anyone can read for themselves the poor evidence they have for these treatments for children and adolescents.

Laidlaw cited a study in which the majority of children prescribed puberty blockers went on to cross- or wrong-sex hormones, and the majority of these went on to sex reassignment surgery.

“All of those who started on blockers and went to cross-sex hormones are infertile,” he said. “Those who had gonads removed are sterilized.”

Psychologist and Christian leader Dr. James Dobson also noted the California bill’s proponents are denying its implementation will lead to the sterilization of children.

“I’ll say exactly what this bill supports: gender mutilation and sterilization. Proponents of this bill will deny the truth — in fact, they already have,” he said in a statement sent to Breitbart News. “They insist that since the bill doesn’t use the word ‘sterilization,’ there is no harm and no foul.”

“Rubbish!” Dobson continued:

These clinics use puberty blockers on pre-pubescent children in order to prevent them from experiencing puberty. If a child doesn’t go through puberty, he or she will likely be sterile for life, a medical fact that many gender clinics expressly admit.

Children aren’t the only victims of such a bill. No rational and compassionate individual could possibly celebrate the mutilation of adolescents or adults. And yet this bill would fund procedures including double mastectomies on adolescent girls and genital amputations and reconstructive procedures for individuals older than 18.

“This isn’t the fulfillment of personal autonomy — this is the celebration of acts of cruelty,” he concluded.