As we near election day, we face an important question: who should have control over our children’s minds and bodies? Parents, or the government, teachers, and doctors?

Here in Pennsylvania, our children’s minds and bodies are being exploited by self-proclaimed experts in the name of “equity,” “inclusivity,” and “tolerance.” School administrators, teachers, therapists, doctors, and government officials are normalizing dangerous pseudoscience, rejecting common sense, and seeking to silence any opposition to their radical policies. Furthermore, our tax dollars are paying for it.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf began his time in office by earmarking taxpayer money to pay for irreversible surgeries, such as double mastectomies to remove healthy breasts from minor girls and irreversible experimental hormones for children. These are the same drugs used to chemically castrate convicted sex offenders. Now, he has issued an executive order hindering the ability of counselors and therapists to offer alternative treatment to patients who request alternatives. Those with closely-held convictions on sexuality and gender that differ from his own are threatened with state-sanctioned punishment. 

READ MORE — Emily Kreps: Women’s equality — racing for second

Planned Parenthood (one of Josh Shapiro’s largest gubernatorial campaign donors), promotes and administers these untested drugs to patients as young as eighteen. In states like California, they are even dispensing them to minors without parental consent. Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania networks teens as young as fourteen with pro-LGBT youth organizations, and encourages people under eighteen to call them for advice when seeking cross-sex hormones. These children are then referred to clinics like Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) where they can get the “help” they seek.

How can we trust that these clinics have the patient’s best interest at heart? This training video from CHOP’s Gender and Sexuality Development program was removed shortly after it was posted by a concerned Bucks County mom. It’s a professional resource for hospital personnel on how to coerce parents who may disagree with their child’s choice to identify as a member of the opposite sex. In the video, the hospital staff secretly use names and pronouns behind the parent’s back, and tell the child they’ll develop a plan to get the parent on board because “when parents aren’t on board, sometimes we have to take baby steps.” Even a cursory glance at these practices proves a strong proactive and defensive stance from parents is not only warranted but necessary.

In 2020, the Pennsylvania House Health Committee held a series of hearings on the issue of “Appropriate Standards of Care for Minors Experiencing Gender Dysphoria.” They featured testifiers from both sides of the issue, including testimony from Dr. Nadia Dowshen, co-director of the Gender and Sexuality Development program at CHOP. Dr. Dowshen stated that care begins as a “series of meetings together with a gender mental health care specialist to understand the child’s gender expression and identity … decisions are made together by the multidisciplinary care team, parents, and child.” She omitted the fact that the “care team” would actively seek to undermine and manipulate the parents.

The most common tactic is to threaten parents using a “risk of suicide” argument as a means to scare the parents into capitulating to the transition plan. However, data shows transitioning does not diminish the risk of suicide. Dr. Stephen Levine, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, also testified before the House Health Committee. He stated that although “organizations make statements that would give the impression that science has already established that prompt ‘affirmation’ is the best for all patients, including all children, who present indicators of trans identity, this belief is not based on good science and ignores what is known and unknown.”

In another recently released video, CHOP experts are training educators to keep a child’s gender identity private (even from their parents). “Gender Identity is considered confidential and private information. When we get this information we keep it private from other students, other staff members, and from parents.” This training was produced in part by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. Why is the government paying to transition children without our knowledge? 

School administrators, teachers, therapists, doctors, and government officials are normalizing dangerous pseudoscience… Furthermore, our tax dollars are paying for it.

The “transgender industry” seems to be driven equally by monetary profit and the radical gender ideology that makes it possible. It’s an industry that is set to grow by leaps and bounds. Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries are big moneymakers for providers. In a recently released 2018 recording of a lecture by Dr. Shayne Taylor, from the Vanderbilt Clinic for Transgender Health in Tennessee, he states: 

“These surgeries make a lot of money. So female-to-male chest reconstruction can bring in $40,000. A patient just on routine hormone treatment who I’m only seeing a few times a year can bring in several thousand dollars… It actually makes money for the hospital.” 

This industry corruption comes from the top down. The World Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) sets the guidelines that clinics follow. In recently released guidelines, they removed any minimum age requirements for cross-sex hormones and surgeries to reduce the risk for lawsuits. One of the authors even suggests that Child Protective Services is a good resource to enforce affirmation by parents against their will.

Britain just closed their major gender clinic, Tavistock, after almost one thousand victims came forward to sue the clinic for the harm and irreversible damage they suffered due to a lack of real counseling as they questioned their identity. This type of “care” is happening right now at CHOP, Penn State Health, and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh — especially to children in foster care. These institutions are acting without oversight and with complete impunity. 

There are good people running for office who will bravely protect families and children over big money and political correctness, but vigilance is needed. Pay attention to who is getting money from Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign and other groups who push this dangerous gender theory on our students. In November, vote for leaders who will take a stand for parental rights.

Emily Kreps is the legal assistant for the Pennsylvania Family Council.