"This 'Equality Act' has so many tragic consequences including forcing medical and counseling professionals to violate their religious, moral and ethical conscience and cause great harm to people by imposing the LGBT ideology,"
WASHINGTON, D.C.--HR 5, known as the "Equality Act," not only threatens the free exercise of religion and free speech, but medical and counseling professionals and facilities will be forced to cause harm by treating gender dysphoria in accordance with LGBT ideology, despite scientific evidence and conscience-based objections.
The "Equality Act" would pressure medical and counseling professionals to promote LGBT affirmation in their practice even if the client wants a different outcome.
Doctors, counselors and medical facilities would be required to prescribe treatments and procedures such as puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and "sex-reassignment" surgeries to gender confused children. The harmful side effects of these treatments include sterility, loss of bone density, cognitive decline, and increased risk of cancer and suicide. Since HR 5 labels talk therapy to address gender dysphoria as a form of "discrimination," professional counselors will be compelled to affirm LGBT and transgender ideology.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, a pediatrician and executive director of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPEDS) said in an interview with The Daily Caller, "This is very dangerous legislation in that it literally mandates that health professionals do harm to people. This act says that a health professional cannot deny treatment to a person based on their gender identity and would unfairly strip parents and moral conscientious health care employers of their freedoms as well as cause more harm to patients and children than good."
"The problem is this: A person who identifies as trans can very readily and easily go and access medical care for a common cold, an ankle sprain, etc. The issue is when they go into a doctor's office and say, for example, a woman goes in and says, 'I identify as a man. I want you, my OB-GYN, to perform a hysterectomy. Take my healthy uterus out of my healthy body.' That's forcing a physician to violate his oath to first do no harm. Now, the transgender activists claim that, 'Oh, no. These transgender surgeries, removing reproductive organs, putting them on hormones is lifesaving.' It's simply not true. That is not what the science shows," said Cretella.
In 2017, ACPEDS issued a statement, "Gender Ideology Harms Children," that urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. The statement includes the following medical facts:
"Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: 'XY' and 'XX' are genetic markers of male and female, respectively--not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident.
No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child's subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward.
A person's belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria.
Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease--the absence of puberty--and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.
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Pre-pubertal children diagnosed with gender dysphoria may be given puberty blockers as young as eleven and will require cross-sex hormones in later adolescence to continue impersonating the opposite sex. These children will never be able to conceive any genetically related children even via artificial reproductive technology. In addition, cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBT--affirming countries.
Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to "gender clinics" where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will "choose" a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults."
"This 'Equality Act' has so many tragic consequences including forcing medical and counseling professionals to violate their religious, moral and ethical conscience and cause great harm to people by imposing the LGBT ideology," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "People's discontentment with their birth sex cannot be solved by hormones and body mutilation. Doctors and counselors should not be forced to engage in procedures not based on scientific fact or reality that cause more harm than good," said Staver.
HR 5 goes to the House floor for a vote tomorrow. The battle over HR 5 will occur in the Senate, where the bill number is S. 788.
For more information, visit LC.org/HR5.
Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
