The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing Wednesday about concerns over gender transition procedures for minors.
Several senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), attended the hearing.
Cassidy argued that healthcare professionals and their organizations profit from recommending and executing gender transition surgeries.
“We should be treating each child with the specialized care they need, not encouraging a 9-year-old boy to become a girl,” Cassidy said.
He also emphasized that the basic role of a parent is to protect children from harm and to “put politics aside.”
He called a witness, 21-year-old Chloe Cole. Cole detransitioned after having a double mastectomy at age 15.
She blasted medical professionals for taking away her breasts at a young age and said her parents were misinformed.
“I hadn’t even had my first kiss or practiced driving before,” Cole said. “How could they take away part of my womanhood before I was even old enough to call myself one?
“I have no breasts, because they were replaced with scars.”
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She continued, saying that her parents were told her mental health would rapidly deteriorate if she didn’t transition, and signs that she had “short hair” meant she wanted to be a boy.
“’Transition your daughter, or bury her.’ That’s the lie my parents were told,” Cole said.
She said she never found the peace and acceptance that medical professionals promised her and her parents. She now has medical complications and will not be able to breastfeed, even if she is able to have children.
She said her gender was treated as a disease that could only be fixed through surgery and argued that some doctors prey on children.
“Any member of Congress who defends this should have to look parents in the eye and explain why their child’s body is now a commodity that they can sell to the gender industry,” Cole said.
She continues to be an active voice in the community, working to stop these procedures on children.
“I was not a sick boy trapped in a girl’s body.”
Sanders, however, said the hearing was a waste of time.
“This hearing is disappointing,” Sanders said.
“We are using precious committee time dealing with an issue that impacts at most, less than one hundredth of 1% of teenagers throughout America, and zero kids under the age of 12.”
He said a hearing that could take several hours only affects such a small number of people. He said their time could be put toward other topics, such as child poverty and hunger, which he said are rampant in the United States.
He argued gender-affirming care should be between doctors, patients, and parents, not politics.
Sanders called on witness Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. Minter, a transgender man, also said the decision should stay out of politics because parents know their children best.
He said the government is attempting to rob families of making decisions about their own children.
“Parents, not politicians, know their children best,” Minter said.
Another witness called by Cassidy argued that some organizations do not have the children’s best interest, and that pediatric doctors accept these guidelines anyway.
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Dr. Kurt Miceli, psychologist and chief medical officer at Do No Harm, said these organizations, such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, influence failures within the profession.
They are “not driven by science, but by ideology,” Miceli said.