Texas Begins Investigating Parents of Transgender Kids for Potential Child Abuse
Texas officials are investigating parents of “transgender adolescents” for possible child abuse related to medical treatments such as puberty blockers and sex change surgeries, The New York Times reported.
The investigations began after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s orders to the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), which relied on an opinion from the Texas attorney general, arguing that some medical interventions for transgender children qualified as child abuse under existing state law.
The DFPS is investigating multiple parents, including one employee of child protective services who has a transgender child, according to the NYT. This employee was placed on administrative leave after being visited by an investigator, but she refused to turn over her child’s medical records, the NYT reported.
The ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal are suing to block the medical records request and to block the governor’s attempt to block parents from encouraging their children’s medical transitions.
One mother said that her family’s health clinic suspended refills for transgender children when her child only had one week left of prescription testosterone, the NYT reported. The NYT quoted a transgender 13-year-old who said parents supporting the medical transition process “is not child abuse.”
Abbott’s effort to restrict the medical gender transition of children began in August 2021, when he urged the DFPS to state whether medical transitions for children constituted child abuse.
“Subjecting a child to genital mutilation through reassignment surgery creates a ‘genuine threat of substantial harm from physical injury to the child,’” he wrote at the time. “This broad definition of ‘abuse’ should cover a surgical procedure that will sterilize the child, such as orchiectomy or hysterectomy, or remove otherwise healthy body parts, such as penectomy or mastectomy.”
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