By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey defends his action blocking transgender medical treatment for minors.
Bailey has issued an emergency regulation strictly limiting gender-transition medication or surgery for youth.
Bailey claims he acted after a whistleblower claimed children were being abused at the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis.
“Once those allegations were made it was important for the Attorney General’s office to stand up and stand in the gap and introduce some measures that would provide some kinds of guardrails and safeguards to protect children who are going through these mental health crises,” Bailey tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in a phone interview. “We need to be treating these mental health crises with psychology and psychiatry, not racing to puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and ultimately irreversible and dangerous surgeries.”
Bailey says full disclosure is the least the center can offer.
“That they at least warn the parents about the negative and irreversible and dangerous consequences of using these kinds of experimental drugs and that they obtain and retain valid parental consent,” Bailey says. “These are safeguards that are common sense to protect kids and make sure parents understand what they’re getting into.”
Transgender advocates criticize the rule and don’t like Bailey calling transgenderism a mental health issue. But Bailey stands by his assessment.
“The triggering mechanisms for these kinds of experimental procedures is the claim or finding of a mental health problem,” according to Bailey who says there must be a diagnosis of gender dysphoria before treatment becomes an option.
Bailey’s emergency regulation highly restricts gender-transition treatments for minors, including hormone blocking or enhancement drugs as well as surgery.
Critics claim Bailey is acting on misleading or incorrect information straight from the anti-trans activist playbook.
Bailey counters those pushing for gender-transition treatment have more than their clients’ best interest at heart.
“Their business model requires that patients continue to be referred to their clinic, that they diagnose gender dysphoria as a mental health problem and then they peddle puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgery,” according to Bailey. “So, there’s an industry behind this that motivates what they’re saying. They want to get paid to continue this kind of work. And, I’ll tell you, there are ample scientific and medical evidence on my side of this issue which says this is dangerous.”