While many celebrated that recent decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the preliminary injunction against Alabama's law banning transgender surgeries and hormones for minors, Cornell Law professor and founder of popular legal website Legal Insurrection William Jacobson said the fight to protect children from harmful medical treatments is far from over.
Jacobson joined the hosts of "Alabama Unfiltered" last Thursday to further explain the court's decisions and shed light on how pervasive the issue is in America.
"Basically, Alabama, I think very wisely, has said that for children that you cannot give those life-altering, irreversible in most cases and very damaging medications to children for the purpose of dealing with gender identity issues."
Rather than banning the use of the drugs outright, he said they would still be able to be prescribed for legitimate, "rare" medical conditions.
"Sometimes those drugs can be used for true medical conditions. It's unusual, it's rare, but it happens," he said. "So if you have a medical condition that requires those [drugs], they can still be given in Alabama. You can't give them because you have a confused 9-year-old who is unsure of what they consider themselves."
The relevant portion begins at the 10:05 mark.
Jacobson likened doctors giving the drugs to confused minors as a form of "child abuse" and said the state has every right to prohibit the practice.
"You may have a constitutional right to raise your child in a particular religion, but you don't have the constitutional right to do physical damage to your child," he said. "And that shouldn't be controversial because every state — and I assume Alabama has it too — has child protective services, has a whole infrastructure to protect children from physical abuse by adults, even particularly their parents. So why would this be an exception to that policy? There's no basis for that."
Jacobson pointed to other European countries like Scandinavia that have stopped prescribing the drugs to minors after realizing their damaging effects. He said the reason American physicians still push them has more to do with "bizarre ideology" and "religious fervor" than sound medical science.
"The problem we face, and the courts are going to have to grapple with this, is that on these highly politicized issues, the organized medical community has been completely corrupted. They are advocates. They are not merely physicians," he said. "…Now that those groups are taken over by activists, the other activists then cite these groups as authorities. It's a complete self-fulfilling prophecy."
One of the narratives pushed by advocates is that not intervening increases the likelihood of suicide. However, Jacobson said the data doesn't back up that claim. He again pointed to Scandinavia, which saw no change in child and teen suicide rates after banning transgender treatments.
"They try to present it: 'If you don't give this to the kid, you're killing the kid,' which statistically, that's not true," he said.
Jacobson concluded with a warning that the Biden administration and transgender advocates will continue to push these harmful medical treatments for children and try to ruin any doctor who opposes them.
"I can't emphasize enough the horrible things that are happening in the medical community," he said. "They not only want to allow these drugs, they want to mandate them. They want to mandate that you have these interventions and they use the euphemism 'gender-affirming care.' But what does that really mean? That means very serious, long-term medical interventions in children… They'll do it in part through these medical associations, which are completely captive right now. They're going to start revoking licenses for any doctor who doesn't do these treatments, and they're going to say you are committing malpractice by not prescribing these drugs. That's where we're heading, and we're heading there very fast."
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com.
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