Texas Claims Transgender Surgery Is Child Abuse. Are They Right?

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) declared transgender surgeries a form of child abuse.

The background: Gov. Abbott sent a letter to DFPS Commissioner Jamie Masters on August 6 asking the department to determine “whether genital mutilation of a child for purposes of gender transitioning through reassignment surgery constitutes as child abuse.” Masters responded in an August 11 letter to Gov. Abbott affirming that performing reassignment surgeries on minors in Texas is a form of child abuse, punishable by state law.

Their reasoning: Transgender surgery and genital mutilation are harmful and most likely irreversible. Children cannot consent to such treatments, making them vulnerable to dangerous parental decisions of transgender surgery.

A controversial topic: The cloud surrounding the question of transgender children is largely uncharted territory. Neither scientists, statisticians, psychologists, politicians, nor public health officials know much about the long-term effects of surgically transitioning children.

In Texas: Texas already prohibits female genital mutilation, making it punishable by law. The law was written in 1999 and amended in 2017 to ensure the practice could not be committed under the guise of religious beliefs or parents’ desire.

Dive Deeper | The Statistics

Risk of suicide: According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), around 8% of adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt. By contrast, female to male transgender teenagers showed an incredibly alarming 50.8% suicide attempt rate. Meanwhile, transgender teenagers who claimed to be a part of neither gender showed a suicide attempt rate of around 41.8%.

For all teenagers, the suicide attempt rate is 7.8%. For sexually abused children, the suicide attempt rate is 32%.

Given the higher suicide rate of transgender children compared to all teenagers and even the sexually abused, many advocates compare the effects of transgenderism to child abuse. As children are pressured into transgenderism by politicized parents, their suicide risk drastically increases.

Learn more | Historical Context

Genital mutilation has historically been a crime: Following the Second World War, hundreds of Nazis were tried and executed for mass genital mutilation of captives. After, the Human Rights Tribunal created the 10th law of the Nuremberg Code, identifying the Nazi’s genital mutilation as a crime against humanity.

Today, advocates push genital mutilation onto children, and the state enthusiastically allows it.