(LifeSiteNews) — Twenty Republican attorneys general late last month signed onto an amicus brief declaring so-called “gender-affirming” drugs and surgeries to be “experimental” in contrast to claims of LGBT activists. They called on a federal court to roll back earlier decisions that they said had relied on false assumptions about the scientific basis for prescribing the life-altering drugs and mutilating surgeries.
Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey led 19 other Republican attorneys general in the amicus brief, which was filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on May 25.
The brief comes after Bailey issued an emergency rule providing new restrictions on mutilating interventions for gender-confused individuals, including the country’s first restrictions on so-called “gender transitions” for adults, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
Hitting back at LGBT activists and the ACLU for opposing the rules, Bailey’s office blasted the groups’ lawsuit as an attempt to protect “ideologically based procedures masquerading as medicine.”
In their May 25 brief, the 20 attorneys general said they submitted their filing to “explain their strong interest in preserving the prerogative of States to make decisions ‘in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’” citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent granting states “wide discretion” to enact policies “in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty.”
“Making policy decisions in an area of scientific uncertainty is a core, sovereign, democratic function,” they continued.
Specifically, the amicus brief took aim at two recent decisions by courts in North Carolina and West Virginia that decided in favor of challenges brought by pro-LGBT group Lambda Legal against the states’ regulations on transgender pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for minors and adults, Fox News reported.
“Taken together, the decisions wrongly assume that the science is settled and fully supports the routine use of puberty blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria,” the Republican attorneys general said.
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LifeSiteNews has extensively reported that, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, cancer, stroke, infertility, and drastically increased instances of suicidality. Moreover, studies indicate that over 80 percent of children suffering from gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence.
Despite this, in recent years rising rates of transgender identification have been met with celebration and adulation in mainstream culture, and rates of surgical mutilation for minors have spiked. In many public school classrooms, young children are actively being encouraged to deny their biology and live as the opposite sex.
In the May 25 filing, the Republicans blasted as “simply wrong” claims that mutilating surgeries and dangerous drugs are “evidence-based.”
“[A]ny claim that chemical or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria is ‘evidence-based’ or settled within the medical community is simply wrong,” they said. “For these interventions, the evidence is lacking.”
To bolster their case, the attorneys general pointed to Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which “have recently declared these interventions to be ‘experimental’ procedures, ‘lacking’ in evidentiary support, whose ‘risks … currently outweigh the possible benefits,’” noting that similar assessments have also been made by “[a]gencies on this side of the Atlantic.”
Transgender advocates often claim that so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC), including mutilating transgender surgeries and cross-sex hormones, are “lifesaving” because they help reduce suicidal ideation for gender-confused individuals. But robust research is scant, and numerous existing studies suggest the exact opposite.
A 2019 study by Richard Bränström, Ph.D., and John E. Pachankis, Ph.D., that appeared to support the theory that “GAC” improves mental health, for example, was later retracted. A 2020 correction to that study found the “results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”
READ: Sweden recommends against puberty blockers for children in setback to trans movement
“In light of Supreme Court precedent giving States wide authority in areas of uncertainty, this Court should permit the States wide latitude to respond to these scientifically unsettled issues,” the amicus brief declares.
In addition to Missouri, the states that signed onto the amicus brief are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Last week, Texas became the latest U.S. state to formally ban the mutilating procedures for children when Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 14, prohibiting both pharmaceutical and surgical gender interventions for minors.