Media Distort Republican Efforts To Restrict Children’s Access to Sex Changes

What’s happening: In the last few years, many states have introduced or passed bills to limit the transgender movement's effects on children. At least 11 states have banned children from receiving “gender-affirming care” like puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or gender-transition surgeries. Other states also require transgender kids to compete in school sports teams and use bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex.

Dangers of sex changes: “Gender-affirming care” has various health risks and irreversible side effects, such as infertility. While the age of medical consent in most U.S. states is 18, the medical community, activists, and the federal government are working to give children more access to these experimental procedures. There is also new evidence that the sex change industry exploits autistic children.

Progressive portrayal: Left-leaning outlets claim these bills are “anti-transgender.” But in fact, none of these bills express hate for people who identify as transgender or prohibit adults from transitioning. They simply seek to prevent minors from undergoing these potentially dangerous treatments. Media rhetoric on this issue has enabled an extreme transgender movement tied to the recent Nashville Shooting.

Division: These bills are meant to protect children from the irreversible side effects of medical treatments many come to regret, but progressives are distorting them as an attack on trans rights. This tactic has become common on the left, portraying right-leaning perspectives on trans issues as radical to create division and garner support for trans activism.