Oregon 15-year-olds can’t drive, vote, smoke or consent to sex, but taxpayers are now forced to pay for their “gender-reassignment” surgery.
The state has become the first state in the country to provide taxpayer-funded sex change operations for teenagers covered in the Medicaid program.
And the process requires no parental notification, according to Fox News.
The age of medical consent in Oregon is 15. And now the Health Evidence Review Commission has “changed its policy to include cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty-suppressing drugs and gender-reassignment surgery as covered treatments for people with gender dysphoria, formally known as gender identity disorder.”
That combination has parents fuming.
“It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children,” Lori Porter of Parents’ Rights in Education says. “They’re our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it’s mindboggling.”
The Oregon Health Authority confirmed parents wouldn’t be notified — in so many words.
“Age of medical consent varies by state. Oregon law — which applies to both Medicaid and non-Medicaid Oregonians — states that the age of medical consent is 15,” spokeswoman Susan Wickstrom tells Fox.
But the coverage appears to be a more politically correct one than one based on science.
The American Psychiatric Association considers gender dysphoria to be a “mental disorder” where “a person identifies as the sex opposite of his or her birth.”
As Fox reports, a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry claims, “most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty.”
Dr. Paul McHugh, the former head of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department, believes Oregon’s policy is tantamount to child abuse.
“We have a very radical and even mutilating treatment being offered to children without any evidence that the long-term outcome of this would be good,” McHugh says.
Dr. Jack Drescher agrees.
“Children age 15 may not fully understand all the consequences of the procedures they are undergoing,” he tells Fox.
The federal Department of Justice has made it clear where it stands on the issue.
In April, it sided with the Southern Poverty Law Center in a suit against the Georgia Department of Corrections.
The prison housing inmate Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman, “failed to provide adequate treatment for Diamond’s gender dysphoria,” The Guardian reported.
In a brief filed with the court, the DOJ “remind[ed] prison officials that the eighth amendment of the US constitution requires them to provide inmates with individualized assessment and care for the condition.”
“Transgender inmates like Ashley have a right to proper medical care,” Southern Poverty Law Center staff attorney Chinyere Ezie said. “They have a right to protection from violence and abuse and these rights are secured by the US constitution.”
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