(LifeSiteNews) — U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently blasted the transgender movement and child “sex changes” as “cruelty.”
Ramaswamy, a Republican running in 2024, spoke with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Sunday. Most of the conversation concerned the issue of transgenderism permeating American culture.
“Gender dysphoria, for the rare few people who have suffered it, is a condition of suffering,” the 37-year-old entrepreneur said. “Why on earth are we going out of our way to create even more of it? If it’s a condition of suffering, let’s not create more of it. That’s what we’re doing.”
“I think that when a kid says that ‘I’m born into the wrong body,’ that ‘my gender doesn’t match my biological sex,’ more often than not, that is the case of a mental health disorder. That doesn’t mean that you disrespect that person. It means they’re crying out for help.”
Ramaswamy highlighted that the trend of “affirming” the gender confusion experienced by minors is “cruelty” and not “actually treating them compassionately.” Additionally, he pointed out that “there isn’t a state in this union that allows you to smoke an addictive cigarette” or “get a tattoo before the age of 18.” Similarly, he argued, “it’s perfectly legitimate to say that we won’t allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers.”
During the interview, Todd pressed Ramaswamy over his authority to make such claims about child mutilation. Asked if he was “confident that gender … isn’t a spectrum,” the presidential candidate responded simply, “I am.”
Todd ignored Ramaswamy’s argument that “there’s a biological basis for this,” referring to distinct male and female chromosomes, and claimed that “there’s a lot of scientific research out there that says gender is a spectrum.”
“Gender dysphoria, for most of our history, all the way through the DSM 5 [The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition] has been characterized as a mental health disorder and I don’t think it’s compassionate to affirm that,” Ramaswamy replied. “Let’s be compassionate and get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we’re actually changing our medical understanding from the last hundred years.”
He also criticized the reality that parents are being taught to accept the transgender ideology and affirm gender confusion, which thwarts their good judgment on deciding to pursue medical intervention.
After debating the transgender ideology, Todd questioned Ramaswamy’s stance on abortion, to which he replied, “I’m unapologetically pro-life, and like many in the pro-life movement, I believe that abortion is a form of murder.” Asked if he would enact a federal ban on abortion if elected president, the candidate said that “Roe was wrongly decided” and murder “is regulated by the states, not by the federal government,” stating his support that abortion should be treated the same way.
Despite the growing push to accept transgenderism as a necessary and “lifesaving” form of “healthcare,” experts in the medical field and research conducted on the so-called treatments have exposed medical intervention for gender confusion as physically and mentally dangerous.
Numerous experts, including endocrinologists, psychiatrists, and pediatricians, have criticized puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery for gender-confused kids as “child abuse” and a path to the continuation or development of serious mental health problems. A study released in January found that the most common adverse reaction to such “treatment” was suicidal ideation, which resulted in two participants killing themselves.
Another study published in February revealed that cross-sex hormones are associated with a “substantially” higher risk of heart-related issues, including heart attacks and strokes. As mentioned briefly by Ramaswamy, a key insight to the radical actions of “sex changes” can also be found in the testimonies of young people who have pursued medical intervention for gender confusion and now regret their decisions.
In 2023 alone, three young women across the United States and Canada have sued medical providers who removed their breasts and wombs in the name of “gender transitions.”