Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., said Thursday there needs to be a nationwide ban on gender transition procedures on minors, saying the federal government must stop "the mutilation of children."
"This is adults deciding to permanently alter the bodies of children who do not have the capacity to make life-altering decisions on their own," Johnson, chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, said. "Today, we see adults inflicting unspeakable harms on helpless children to affirm the adults' own worldview that gender is somehow fluid, that can be surgically altered, that there are no lasting consequences of all this madness as a result of the change procedures."
The subcommittee held a hearing titled "The Dangers and Due Process Violations of 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Children," examining how children are being coerced by adults in positions of authority into life-altering and medically questionable gender-transition procedures without full understanding of the meaning or impact.
"What is even more alarming is that the central tenet of the transgender movement and its allies is to exclude parents as much as possible from making decisions about the health of their own children," Johnson said. "Medical professionals in schools increasingly see parents as transphobic bullies who must be prevented from standing in the way of the medical sexual transition of their own kids."
There has been a push among states to ban gender-transition procedures for minors, with 21 enacting such laws, according to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Courts have placed injunctions on laws enacted in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky. On July 18, Louisiana's GOP-led Legislature overturned Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' veto on a law banning gender-transition care for minors.
The subcommittee heard from Chloe Cole, who was put on puberty blockers at age 13 and had a double mastectomy at 15 because medical professionals told her parents if she weren't treated, she would commit suicide. Cole detransitioned at age 16 and is now a staunch advocate against gender-transition treatments and procedures for children.
"I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America," Cole, who turned 19 on Thursday, told the subcommittee. "I speak to you in the hope that you will have the courage to bring the scandal to an end and ensure that other vulnerable teenagers, children, and young adults don't go through what I went through."
Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said the hearing "is an all-time low for the Republican majority in my three decades in Congress. I have taken part in plenty of hearings where I did not agree with the choice of topic, to say the least; but I am absolutely disgusted by the Republican majority's bullying, bigoted framing of an issue that would otherwise be worthy of serious discussion."