Arkansas’ SAFE Act Goes to Trial Monday

Above: Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R — Springdale) explains the SAFE Act to the Arkansas House of Representatives in this file photo from 2021.

The federal lawsuit over Arkansas’ Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act will go trial at 9:00 AM on Monday, October 17, 2022. The U.S. District Court’s schedule indicates the trial will last all day, with Judge James Moody presiding over the case.

The SAFE Act is an excellent law that protects children from sex-reassignment procedures, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones.

The Arkansas Legislature overwhelmingly passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act last year.

Researchers do not know the long term effects that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can have on kids.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never approved puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition. Doctors are giving these hormones to kids off-label, in a manner the FDA never intended.

In July the U.S. Food and Drug Administration added a warning label to puberty blockers after biological girls developed symptoms of tumor-like masses in the brain.

In 2021 a major hospital in Sweden made headlines after announcing it would no longer administer puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children.

Over the summer news broke that a U.K. gender clinic that prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children for many years now faces the possibility of lawsuits from upwards of 1,000 families.

Despite mounting evidence that sex-change hormones and procedures are not appropriate for children, the ACLU and others have asked the federal courts to strike down Arkansas’ SAFE Act.

Several business interests and the Biden-Harris Administration also have joined the fight against Arkansas’ SAFE Act.

The lawsuit over the SAFE Act has underscored several key points about gender dysphoria, including:

  • The science surrounding gender identity remain in flux.
  • The demographics of transgender youth is changing in ways that scientists do not yet understand.
  • Randomized clinical trials do not support the adolescent gender transition processes that many doctors in America use.

U.S. District Judge James Moody has temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the law while the lawsuit progresses. 

Arkansas’ SAFE Act protects children. We believe federal courts ultimately will recognize that fact and uphold this good law as constitutional.

Planned Parenthood’s New Revenue Stream Is Not a New Direction

The Planned Parenthood organization has been built, from its founding, on destruction of lives, especially preborn ones. Now, even as legalities and access shift in the wake of the Dobbs decisionAmerica’s largest provider and promoter of abortion has added another revenue stream. This one also promises to destroy lives, albeit in a new and subtler way. This one also promises to help women but is, in actuality, built on ideas that deny the existence of women. 

A new documentary from the Center for Bioethics and Culture tells the stories of three young women who believed they were not women and that they could become young men, only to regret it. The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters chronicles the experiences of Cat Cattinson, Helena Kerschner, and Grace Lidinsky-Smith, two of whom received hormone therapy at Planned Parenthood clinics. Though activists and media outlets pretend they do not exist, these are just three stories of a growing number of people once sure they were born in the wrong bodies but now know differently. 

To believe patients who say they were born in the wrong bodies is a sort of dogma, especially among healthcare professionals who would never handle any other medical condition this same way. Only in the case of gender dysphoria are no questions to be asked. Trans activists call questioning someone’s self-identification and assessing their mental health “gatekeeping.” This dogma has turned transgender “medicine” into the only kind of medicine in which patients approach a doctor with their diagnosis and preferred treatment. 

Planned Parenthood has now jumped into this business with both feet. On its website, the organization claims that if a child or young adult is “insistent, consistent, and persistent” about their trans identity, then they should be medically “affirmed.” That word “affirm” is code for pumping those patients, even if minors, full of mind-altering ideas and body-altering hormones and puberty blockers.  The treatment aims toward surgeries to amputate healthy body parts and perpetuate wounds, surgeries that are lucrative for providers.  

Recently, The National Catholic Register revealed how rapidly Planned Parenthood has ramped up its gender transition services. In 2015, the abortion giant offered hormone therapy in 16 states and 65 locations. Today, it offers hormones in 41 states and 200 locations. To date, Planned Parenthood has “treated” an estimated 35,000 people. 

The young women featured in The Detransition Diaries found it shockingly easy to get life-altering hormones and surgery referrals at Planned Parenthood. Cat and Helena describe how the so-called “informed consent” process they went through involved no psychological evaluations, no waiting period, and no tests. Cattinson claims to have received testosterone injections after just a 30-minute phone call with Planned Parenthood, and a letter to have her breasts removed without ever talking with a doctor in person. Thankfully, she had second thoughts about surgery after the hormones made her sick.  

According to Kerschner, who told her story earlier this year in a harrowing Substack post, the initial appointment with Planned Parenthood took only an hour. After waiving any blood tests or labs, they gave her quadruple the recommended dose of testosterone, just because she asked. At the time, she was 18.  

As another de-transitioner on YouTube chillingly put it, Planned Parenthood is “handing out hormones like candy to anyone who walks in the door…” Hormones, we should add, whose side effects include permanent infertility. Yet as the Register notes, Planned Parenthood openly advertises its new life-destroying business, touting quick appointments, same-day prescriptions, and even promising not to require a letter from a mental health provider. 

It’s essential that these stories and others like them are told. They represent a growing group of people who aren’t supposed to exist—people who were “insistent, consistent, and persistent” about their trans identity, only to reverse course and deeply regret what was done to their bodies. Planned Parenthood long escaped real media coverage and scrutiny in its abortion business, despite credible accusations of illegal activity. Thanks to years of undercover sting operations, Planned Parenthood was finally exposed for past abuses like its willingness to abet human trafficking and illegally market fetal body parts. Even then, they received a pass from serious media coverage. Instead, many outlets chose to attack anyone who criticized them.  

Today, the organization is hawking gender transitions to vulnerable women and men, even children, and misinforming them of the consequences. These patients deserve to hear stories of de-transitioners, stories of heart-wrenching regret from people who aren’t supposed to exist. And Planned Parenthood deserves to answer for its dangerous practices and yet a new assault on human lives and bodies. Come to breakpoint.org, click on this commentary, and we’ll tell you how you can watch The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters.

Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

UW Ignores Misrepresentation of Puberty Blockers’ Research

Recently the University of Washington published research into whether hormones and puberty blockers improve the mental health of kids with gender dysphoria. According to the PR team for the university, pretty much every media outlet that covered the study, and the study’s authors themselves, the answer was yes. 

Except it wasn’t. The numbers actually revealed no difference between kids’ mental health before taking hormones and after a year of the treatment. At both moments in time, kids were suffering from dramatic mental health problems. If anything, the study suggested that kids who did not start taking the medications got a little worse. 

The university refused to officially respond when an independent journalist challenged their conclusions—though the study’s authors admitted their findings had been misrepresented. Internal emails showed the university’s communications team wasn’t concerned the story was not accurate. They liked that it was popular

Among the casualties of the politicizing of scientific research is public trust in our institutions. Still, the most vulnerable casualties are the kids. 

Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.