AMA trying to shut down opposition to child castration surgery
The American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) wrote a joint letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on October 3, 2022, demanding that he take action against citizens who oppose, in their words, “gender-affirming care, to children and adolescents.”
Euphemism
“Gender-affirming care,” according to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is a euphemism for the castration of children:
And understand what that is, that’s a euphemism. They will actually take a young boy and castrate the boy. They will take a young girl and do a mastectomy, or they will sterilize her because of the gender dysphoria. There is no evidence that this is something that’s effective medical care.
And we know that people that do this when they’re kids have huge problems going on. So we believe that this is not appropriate in the state of Florida. We don’t think a doctor should get a license if they’re doing it.
And I think these doctors should be able to be sued by these folks when they develop problems later in life. This is wrong. Minors should not be having this type of stuff performed on them.
State laws not enough?
The letter begins by saying that hospital staff members have received bomb threats and other threats of violence, crimes which are already punishable under state laws. In fact, HG Legal Resources reports that “the penalties for making a bomb threat can be quite severe. On a state level, the laws vary by jurisdiction. But, generally, one can be expected to be charged with a felony (a crime punishable by more than a year in prison) …”
In New York, a bomb hoax can earn the caller seven years in state prison, even in the absence of any actual intention to do anything more than make a phone call. In Michigan, Michael Varrone was sentenced to one year in county jail with no possibility of early release, three years’ probation and mandatory mental health treatment for calling in a bomb threat to the state capitol.
Existing federal prosecution guidelines not enough?
Bomb threats are often prosecuted by federal authorities as well. Teenager Nicholas Martino was sentenced to time served, after four and a half months in federal prison, for making bomb threats on interstate phone calls, while a Georgia man, Benjamin Stasko, was sentenced by a federal judge to 21 months (also already served) for a bomb threat to federal property. In fact, a woman, Catherine Leavy, was charged in September by the US Attorney’s Office with calling in a hoax threat to Boston Children’s Hospital in connection with the very subject of the letter, “gender-affirming care”. She had already been ordered to use GPS monitoring and stay away from the hospital. She is facing up to 10 years in prison for “making threatening communications in interstate commerce,” despite stating she had “no plan or intention to actually bomb” and despite her battle with mental illness, tweeting in 2020, “parents tried locking me up 3 times I’m an insane asylum cause the earth feels like it’s off axis.”
Without any explanation of why state laws and current federal prosecution guidelines are not sufficient to deal with threats to hospital staff, the letter demands federal government involvement in all such threats to hospitals. “We now urge your office take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.”
This change requested by the AMA and the other groups, who claim to represent “more than 270,000 physicians and more than 220 children’s hospitals,” would have the FBI going after pranksters making bomb threats even in the absence of intersate actions and where federal property is not involved.
New constitutional right?
The letter complains that the bomb hoaxes, “threaten federally protected rights to health care.” Since the letter is specifically about threats to providers of “gender-affirming care,” the implication is that there’s a constitutional right to, in the words of Governor Desantis, “take a young boy and castrate the boy.” The letter does not provide a section or amendment of the Constitution that provides this right, but the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) describes patient rights this way:
As a patient, you have certain rights. Some are guaranteed by federal law, such as the right to get a copy of your medical records, and the right to keep them private. Many states have additional laws protecting patients, and healthcare facilities often have a patient bill of rights. An important patient right is informed consent.
The right to one’s own medical records and to privacy does not create a right to perform genital surgery on children, but the right to “informed consent” mentioned by the HHS might be grounds for the government to investigate the extent to which children and their parents were warned of the long term effects, including the possibility of later regret, of the surgeries. The NY Post, for example, reported on a number of teens who expressed regret.
Now 17, Chloe is one of a growing cohort called “detransitioners” — those who seek to reverse a gender transition, often after realizing they actually do identify with their biological sex. Tragically, many will struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors. “I can’t stay quiet,” said Chloe. “I need to do something about this and to share my own cautionary tale” …
Helena Kerschner, a 23-year-old detransitioner from Cincinnati, Ohio, who was born a biological female, first felt gender dysphoric at age 14. She says Tumblr sites filled with transgender activist content spurred her transition. “I was going through a period where I was just really isolated at school, so I turned to the Internet,” she recalled. In her real life, Kerschner had a falling out with friends at school; online however, she found a community that welcomed her.
“My dysphoria was definitely triggered by this online community. I never thought about my gender or had a problem with being a girl before going on Tumblr.”
She said she felt political pressure to transition, too.
“The community was very social justice-y. There was a lot of negativity around being a cis, heterosexual, white girl, and I took those messages really, really personally.”
Chloe Cole, a 17-year-old student in California, had a similar experience when she joined Instagram at 11.
“I started being exposed to a lot of LGBT content and activism,” she said. “I saw how trans people online got an overwhelming amount of support, and the amount of praise they were getting really spoke to me because, at the time, I didn’t really have a lot of friends of my own.”
Not just pranksters
While the letter begins by describing bomb threats and other threats of actual violence, it later complains that
The attacks are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care …
The letter then goes on to demand, as mentioned above, FBI investigations into and federal prosecution of “all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.”
The medical organizations do not limit their request for prosecution to perpetrators of actual threats, but rather ask to include all responsible, right after alleging that the threats stem from “a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information.”
The request can thus be understood as pushing the prosecution of anyone claiming on social media, or elsewhere, that castration is not in the best interest of a minor. This is a slippery slope where a poster can be prosecuted for expressing an opinion after which a bomb threat is called in. In fact, someone on the other side of the political spectrum can theoretically call in a bomb threat following such a post in order to cause the person who made the post to be prosecuted.
