In the US and around the world, it’s rapidly becoming among the most emotionally charged and contentious issues of the day.
To supporters, it’s gender affirmation for children who think they were born into the wrong body and should be given puberty blockers, mastectomies or other surgery.
To opponents, its nothing less than child abuse, body mutilation and medical malpractice.
Battles now rage over it in courts and legislatures across America and among medical and ethical professionals.
Chicago, however, has made its decision, not just for itself but for the rest of the world.
It went mostly unnoticed in last week’s declaration by the Chicago City Council to become an abortion sanctuary, but the new city ordinance also covers, with no regard for age, “gender-affirming care.” By that it means as “all services, supplies, drug therapies, and other care that an individual may receive to support and affirm the individual’s gender identity.”
The ordinance bans cooperation by any city official or worker, including Chicago police, with any other jurisdiction’s effort to investigate or enforce a matter that conflicts with Chicago’s idea of bodily autonomy, “regardless of whether such law is stylized as a charge relating to homicide, child abuse, or any other charge that is pretext for enforcing such a restrictive law.”
Bodily autonomy, as the city defines it, includes self-governance over one’s own reproductive gender identity, including gender-affirming care, regardless of age. The ordinance passed in city council unanimously except for Ald. Sposato’s no vote, and Coleman and Sawyer who didn’t vote or were absent.
What that means is if a person or prosecutor from outside Illinois has a valid law, judgement or ethical complaint to investigate or enforce, Chicago won’t lift a finger to help.
Many states are rapidly moving to limit or prohibit childhood gender treatments. At least 16 have already done so or have tried, though court fights rage over much of it.
Europe, however, is far ahead in cracking down on gender treatment for kids, as summarized in a recent Patheos column:
The United Kingdom is shutting down the Tavistock gender-identity clinic, the largest clinic performing these kinds of treatments in the world. The National Health Service, the UK’s socialized medicine arm, closed the clinic after independent investigators found that what it does is “not a safe or viable long-term option” for young people with gender dysphoria….
Sweden has ruled out the use of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Finland now requires that “the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria” and “the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.” Also, medical societies in France, Belgium, and Australia are coming out against these procedures.
In the United States, most people are accepting of transgender people, with a strong majority (64%) saying they should face no discrimination, according to a Pew Research survey.
But it’s an entirely different matter when it comes to hormones or surgery to delay or alter the gender of a child who has reached neither physical nor mental maturity.
According to that Pew survey, 46% favor making it illegal for health care professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition but just 31% oppose. Forty-one percent favor making it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools and 38% oppose.
Proponents see some kids as victims of “sexual dysphoria” – extreme distress caused by sexuality that’s different from the body they were born with. Critics view it as simple, childhood asexuality that shouldn’t be abused by turning them away from what they would naturally grow into.
The most comprehensive critique of childhood sexuality treatments is titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. It’s by Abigail Schrier, a best-selling author and journalist.
A recent column by a pediatric surgeon is a good example of what critics say of childhood gender affirmation:
Surgery for so-called “gender affirmation” or ill-named “sex reassignment” grossly violates the ethical canons I have taught, that were taught to me, and that were taught to all surgeons until very recently. Such surgery entails radical and irreversible operations on normal healthy organs — mastectomy performed on normal breasts, amputation of the normal penis and scrotum (with construction of an opening to imitate a vagina), excision of the normal uterus and ovaries (with construction of a skin-tube to imitate a penis), among other procedures. These procedures are permanently disfiguring and render patients sterile…. Gender dysphoria is a psychiatric illness, and should be treated by psychiatric therapy, not by hormones or by scalpels.
As the debate and lawsuits shake out, gender affirmation may well come to be regarded as a violation of ethical canons, as that surgeon believes it should. Malpractice lawsuits could then become common against affirmation practitioners. A major class action is already underway in the United Kingdom and another appears likely in Australia.
But Chicago’s new ordinance will put the city at war with anybody attempting to enforce any such claims, no matter how valid they are found to be in the state where the claims arise.
States are supposed to give “full faith and credit” to other states’ laws and rulings under Article IV of the US Constitution.
But Chicago seems quite fond of thumbing its nose at full faith and credit. “We won’t allow City resources to be used to enforce draconian, dystopian laws from other states.” said Chicago Alderman Matt Martin in the city’s announcement of the new ordinance. “With the passage of this ordinance, Chicago continues to grow as a sanctuary city…,” said Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa.
Emotions in Chicago had already spiked over childhood sex treatments after a recent City Journal column described how Lurie, the largest children’s hospital in Chicago, “created partnerships with local school districts to promote radical gender theory, ‘kink,’ ‘BDSM,’ and ‘trans-friendly’ sex toys for children.”
With so much controversy nationally and internationally, we can expect the spotlight to turn eventually on Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. A recent Tablet Magazine column detailed massive amounts of funding by him and his family “pushing synthetic sex identities.” Pritzker and his family, according to the column, “have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology.”
Chicago may think it walled itself off from the issue, but the firestorm is only getting started.
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