Transgenderism, suicide, and teens

By Deacon Mike Manno

It’s difficult not to sound like a broken record when we continue to speak of the ills that are now penetrating into our elementary schools, infecting our most precious treasure. Unfortunately for the government and the teachers’ unions, their ill-advised extended school shutdown has opened a window into the extent of that indoctrination via the Internet.

Probably the most serious of all concerns is how some schools, their “woke” administrators, teachers, librarians, and social workers have introduced our children into the cesspool of gender identity as early as kindergarten.

Now, I do not mean to downplay the very real problem some children have with the recognized condition called gender dysphoria. That is a serious problem with some children and their families and should be dealt with on a professional level. However, as nearly all experts agree, a child’s infatuation with cross-gender identification will usually correct itself as the child matures.

But that natural process is not being allowed to occur in many school districts, as we have discussed in this column before. Instead, many schools foist these concepts on unwitting students, many of whom are too young to understand.

We have spoken just a few weeks ago about how the children are being “groomed” by adults to consider that they might be mis-gendered and allowing them to “play act” as the opposite sex during school hours, including dressing as their assumed sex and using pronouns associated thereto.

Then, when the time comes that the parents are finally confronted with the predicament, they are told that the only course of action is for their little one to begin the process of transitioning into the opposite sex — unless, of course, the school is located in a state that allows minors to consent to medical procedures, and the process has already begun.

At this point parents are usually told that this is for the good psychological health of their child and refusal to do so will likely lead to the child’s suicide. In several cases I have read, social workers from the state department of human services have also threatened to take the child from the parents since the potential suicide is so glaring the state could conclude that the parents were engaged in child abuse if they do not act.

That myth of the danger of suicide has been promulgated by the “woke” crowd now for several years. However, a new report from the Heritage Foundation disputes that myth.
The author, Jay Greene, Ph.D., a senior research fellow with Heritage, has undertaken what might be the first true study of the issue and has made a remarkable finding: The suicide risk for students in states which allow them to seek such medical procedures without parental consent are much higher than the rates in those states which require parental involvement.

He writes, “The new analysis presented here finds that the existing literature on this topic suffers from a series of weaknesses that prevent researchers from being able to draw credible causal conclusions about a relationship between medical interventions and suicide.”

He notes that the treatment by puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones did not exist in the U.S. before 2007 and was extremely rare before 2010. Thus, the sufficiency of the available data provided no studies showing a causal connection between availability of the trans-therapy and later outcomes, including suicides, nor were they able to provide showings of an adequate control group that would provide this information.

For example, previous “studies” did not investigate the impact of parental involvement in these cases, nor were they able to distinguish between those minors who wanted but were refused treatment and those that were not.

And to further hinder existing research on the matter, puberty blockers were not originally designed for children to assist with gender change, but rather they were designed “to delay precocious puberty among very young children who began puberty well before their peers.” And sex hormones were “developed primarily to treat people who were unable to produce enough of the hormones of their biological sex.”

Thus, he reported: “The fact that randomized experiments were not required for this use of puberty blockers and sex hormones, and that this novel use of these drugs is relatively recent, means that only a handful of studies examine their effects, and all these studies use inferior correlational research designs.

“That is, one can never know with confidence whether the drugs cause those outcomes, or whether other factors that make people more likely to receive the drugs were the cause,” he continued.

Then addressing the issue of the denial of the trans-drugs, he segregated the data between states that allowed minors to obtain routine health care without parental consent (33 states and the District of Columbia) and those states (17) that had no such provision. In the 33 states that allow minors to make their own health-care decisions, they are able to obtain puberty blockers and hormones at least in some circumstances, as these treatments become more widely available. The result was, as reported above, that the suicide rate was higher in those states that allowed minors to make their own choices than in those that strictly held to parental involvement.

“One of the most important reasons why some adolescents were able to access the hormone therapies while others could not is that parental consent is often, though not always, required to get these drugs. As is well-known from research on gender-confused youth, as well as more generally, closer and more positive relationships between children and parents promote mental well-being and is protective against suicide,” he reported.

In conclusion, Dr. Greene writes, “The research presented here does not directly examine whether the individuals who receive gender-related medical interventions are at a higher risk of suicide, but it does directly examine the state policies that facilitate minors accessing those interventions without parental consent and finds that policies raise suicide risks among young people….The lack of theoretically plausible alternatives strengthens the case for concluding that cross-sex medical interventions are the cause of the observed increase in suicide among young people.”

He continues, “At a minimum, the results presented in this Backgrounder demonstrate that efforts to lower legal barriers for minors to receive cross-sex medical interventions do not reduce suicide rates and likely lead to higher rates of increased suicide rates among young people in states that adopt these changes. States that currently facilitate minors’ access to routine health care without the consent of a parent or legal guardian should consider revising such policies.”

Bottom line: As the Church and society have taught parents and families matter, and those “woke” administrators and social workers who are determined to intervene to separate them are putting children at considerable and unavoidable risk.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 9:30 CT on Faith On Trial at IowaCatholicRadio.com.)