Riskerna med irreversibla könskorrigerande operationer på minderåriga diskuterades i en senatsutfrågning | NTD NYHETER

And today the Senate HELP Committee held a critical hearing on protecting children from irreversible gender transition procedures. With growing concerns over the sharp rise in medical interventions on minors, the spotlight was on detransitioners and medical experts warning about those dangers. NDD's Washington correspondent Jack Bradley has the details. The entire premise of transgenderism is that I will take my own life if I don't transition. Yet here I am today. On Capitol Hill, senators hearing testimony exposing how children are being rushed into life-altering puberty blockers in surgeries, often with devastating and irreversible consequences. I am what is known as a detransitioner. Chloe Cole, a 21-year-old detransitioner from California, shared her story about how she was influenced by social media at a young age to think that she may be a boy trapped in a girl's body. She began taking hormone and puberty blocking medicine at the advice of her psychologists and physicians at just 12 years old and had a double mastectomy when she was 15 and says that the doctors gave her parents an ultimatum. Transition or your child is going to kill themselves. But multiple studies have found that gender surgeries and puberty blockers do not reduce long-term mental illness or suicide rates. Other countries have rightly reacted to this evidence. The United Kingdom has banned puberty blockers and the National Health Services has stopped providing cross-sex hormones for youth. Cole says she was never warned about the permanent effects of the drugs and surgeries she underwent. I'm still suffering the consequences. I still have chronic pain in my joints, in my back, in my pelvis. I don't know if I'm going to be able to have children of my own. Cole is just one of tens of thousands who underwent such life-altering procedures when they were children. I'm not alone. I have hundreds of friends who have been through the same thing. An entire generation of children were lied to. There is no such thing as a child being born in the wrong body. But there are physicians and medical bodies who prey on the confusion of perfectly healthy young boys and girls. Now the Democrat senators present on the committee dismissed this hearing as a waste of time and politically charged. All of them completely avoided questioning Chloe Cole or the medical doctor from Do No Harm on the panel and instead brought their own witness, an LGBT lawyer who argued against government intervention. It is not the place of politicians to insert themselves into these conversations which are so unique to each child. But the rest of the panel and the Senate Republicans present on the committee said that it is the government's role to protect children and the vulnerable. We already have legislation that is making other forms of abuse in children illegal. This is no different. As adults, we all have the responsibility to look after the children around us. That is our duty. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order restricting federal funding for puberty blockers and gender procedures for children and those under 19. More than two dozen states have followed suit, already banning these irreversible interventions for minors. For NTD News Washington, I'm Jack Bradley.