Protect Children & Taxpayers From Radical Gender Ideology

On May 15, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) introduced two bills to the U.S. Senate—one that would prohibit federal funds from supporting gender transition procedures, and another that would altogether ban such procedures on minors.

These bills are so radical in light of contemporary opinion, yet so simple and straightforward in achieving their goals, that when I read their respective texts, I was awed that the U.S. Senate still contains the type of statesman who will stand for the truth in this way.

And Marshall isn’t alone; co-sponsoring one or both of these bills are U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Steve Daines (R-MT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Mike Lee (R-UT), Markwayne Mulllin (R-OK), James Risch (R-ID), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Josh Hawley (R-MO).

On the one hand, the End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act of 2023 (S. 1595) would prohibit several of the current ways that federal dollars can fund gender transition procedures. Under this bill’s provisions, federal funds may not directly fund gender transition therapy or surgery. Neither may they be shuttled into health care plans that include such practices in their coverage.

Further still, no health care service that is furnished by a physician employed by the federal government or even furnished in a facility owned by the federal government may provide gender transition procedures.

The bill does clarify that non-federal health care providers would be free to provide such treatment, and that customers would still be free to seek out separate (non-federal) plans that cover such treatment should they want it. Yet, the federal government must stay out of it.

On the other hand, the Protecting Children From Experimentation Act of 2023 (S. 1597) takes it a step further when dealing with minors; it would ban gender transition procedures for minors in almost all cases—excepting rare medical situations. Under its provisions, any physical or mental healthcare professional would be fined (or face up to five years in prison) for performing or even referring a gender transition procedure.

The bill makes sure to clarify that minors may not be prosecuted for receiving such treatment; however, recipients of the treatment are allowed to bring civil action for relief against the physician who performed it.

Marshall and his colleagues’ stand for the truth deserves three whole-hearted cheers. They are daring to suggest that physicians performing supposedly “essential” gender transition care should be imprisoned! While it seems harsh, it is not any less harsh than the “care” they are purporting to provide—nothing less than a 21st-century version of the self-mutilation practiced in pagan rites for millennia, an abomination which defiles God’s created order bestowed to each one of us since our conception.

Now, it’s one thing to sit back and cheer for U.S. Senators who are willing to take stands like this, drawing clear lines between black and white in a world filled with multitudinous shades of grey. But politics is not a spectator sport. “The people” are more than just the hypothetical but fictitious “12th man” on the football team. “The people” send the players onto the field, tell them how to play, and recall them when they don’t do their jobs right.

Many of Marshall’s colleagues are assuredly shocked at his audacious proposal. But it’s audacious when viewed from a worldview that presupposes society has already settled the question—or at least the toleration—of gender transition procedures.

Thankfully, U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) has introduced the same legislation in the U.S. House (H.R. 3328 and H.R. 3329), which has 40 co-sponsors, including U.S. Representatives Mike Bost and Mary Miller from southern Illinois.

If we all called or emailed our representatives right now and let them know that we—their very own constituents—agree with Marshall’s stand for the truth, the excuses to dismiss his position as audacious and radical, will start disappearing. Let them know that you sent them on to the field to represent you, and you will not tolerate government support of lies.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth and your local U.S. Representative to ask them to support or even co-sponsor these two bills. Impressionable children should not be making life-altering, body-mutilating decisions about their sexuality and adults should not be pushing woke sexual anarchy either.

U.S. Representative LaMalfa rightly points out in his press release,

let kids be kids and wait until adulthood to make a choice they likely wish they hadn’t as a child. Adults and the medical field shouldn’t be allowed to coerce this “woke” agenda onto them when they should be their protectors. Adults need to realize that their coercion is abuse, and should face appropriate consequences.

Written by Patricia Mosley

As part of their COVID-19 response, the U.K. initially approved new measures to allow women to take the complete abortion pill regimen at home. Now, it appears that this measure has been reversed. The reasoning given was, “This was published in error. There will be no changes to abortion regulations.”

The abortion pill is a two-drug regimen that is basically a do-it-yourself method anyways, but normally, the woman would have some type of interaction with a physician by taking the first pill (mifepristone) under their supervision at the clinic and then going home to take the second drug (misoprostol) 24-48 hours later.

Because the U.K. considers abortion an “essential service” amid the pandemic, their response was to completely place the burden of abortion on women. These women would have been popping both pills at home with no physician oversight.

But this is what the abortion industry all over the world has been calling for even before the current pandemic—for abortions to be unrestricted, unregulated, and do-it-yourself. Gone are the days when they were calling for “safe, legal, and rare” to protect against desperate women performing their own “back-alley” abortions. Now abortion pills are the new back-alley method, credentialed by the world’s most prestigious medical institutions.

Because the U.S. has FDA restrictions (REMs) on the abortion pill (U.S. brand “Mifeprex”), it cannot be a “complete” DIY method, but either way, restrictions or no restrictions, the abortion pill method is set up to be an at-home, multi-day, traumatic process that comes with the risk of serious complications.

Chemical abortions carry four times the rate of complications compared to surgical abortions. The two side effects observed to be more prevalent during chemical abortions than surgical abortions were hemorrhage and incomplete abortion. An incomplete abortion means there needed to be surgical intervention to extract any remaining parts of the unborn child from the woman’s uterus. Prolonged hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion can occur. It’s already been reported to the FDA that over 500 blood transfusions, over a thousand hospitalizations, and 24 deaths took place as result of Mifeprex. And that is just what’s been reported.

Fortunately right now, the U.S. has strong pro-life leadership from the top down, so at a national level it’s unlikely that we will see abortion be declared an “essential service” at a time like this. However, that will not stop the abortion industry from demanding that it should be. Some states have already deemed abortion “essential.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and their allies have already put out a statement complaining that abortions are being left out of essential health care services that need to remain open at this time. Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio is at war with the state Attorney General and Health Department as they continue to perform abortions even though they have been directly ordered not to.

Planned Parenthood claims they can still achieve the goal of conserving medical resources for essential health care personnel combatting COVID-19 by remaining open. How would they do this? They didn’t explain.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to deduce that the abortion industry is likely dispensing abortion pills to pregnant women who are past the FDA-approved gestational age limit of 10 weeks. The abortion industry has already been experimenting with performing abortions past 13 weeks on vulnerable women in Burkina Faso, Columbia, and Mexico.

Even the once abortion-neutral humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders (DWB), with the approval of the World Health Organization, has instructional guidelines on how women can perform their own drug-based abortion up to 22 weeks!

Although they claim these instructional videos are for training their medical workers, they acknowledge that they expect women to go to the site in order to learn how to induce their own abortions.

The fact that chemical abortions already carry significant complications and that the rate of those complications only increase as the gestational age of the pregnancy increases shows that Doctors Without Borders are bordering on medical malpractice.

The complications that can arise from taking the abortion pill place women in life-threatening situations that may require follow-up visits to the abortion clinic and the emergency room. We are now likely to see scenarios where women who have taken the abortion pill regimen will need blood transfusions, treatment for infections, and possible follow-up surgery to complete the abortion, which means they will need to go to the emergency room and wait for treatment next to possible victims of the coronavirus pandemic. How is this conserving medical resources? How is this protecting the safety and health of women?

Thankfully, there are still some reputable medical leaders, such as AAPLOG, who refuse to put women in this type of danger by categorizing abortion as an “essential service.”

Killing innocent children in the womb should never be considered any type of “service,” in the midst of a pandemic or not. By encouraging women to self-manage an abortion up to 22 weeks and calling do-it-yourself abortion a “paid” service, the abortion industry has been and is currently showing us that they have no regard for human dignity whatsoever—for the child or the mother.

This article was originally published at the FRCblog.com.

The Obama Administration has announced that it is implementing a mandate that all health insurance plans must include coverage for abortion-inducing drugs. The mandate requires that all health insurance plans must provide coverage for any and all contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which includes abortifacient drugs such as Ella and Plan B.

The health insurance edict, announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, will take effect on August 1st. Sebelius was given authority to issue the mandate under the terms of President Obama’s health care legislation, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That bill empowered Sebelius to determine what “preventative health care services” must be incorporated in all health insurance plans sold and offered in the United States.

The only exceptions to the mandate will be churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship. Religiously-based hospitals, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations will be required to comply with the law effective August 1, 2013.

This means that Christian organizations who offer health insurance benefits for their employees will be compelled to violate their religious convictions by covering the costs of abortion-inducing drugs. This also means that Catholic hospitals and other Catholic agencies will be required to underwrite contraceptive coverage and the costs of sterilizations that violate their religious beliefs.

The expectation is that many Christian employers will cease providing health insurance to their employees rather than pay for drugs that violate their religious conscience.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has sharply denounced the new mandate. “To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their health care is literally unconscionable. The Obama Administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand. This is a challenge and compromise of our religious liberty.”

Archbishop Dolan also derided the one-year grace period given to religious entities to comply with the law. Sebelius said the one-year delay was offered to accomodate religious liberty concerns. Dolan strongly disagrees. “In effect, the President is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

Anna Franzonello, staff attorney for Americans United for Life, echoes the Archbishop’s perspective. “The Obama Administration has added insult to injury by providing religious non-profits a year to ‘adapt’ to this coercive mandate. There should be no expiration date for individual freedom of conscience.”

“Essentially, Secretary Sebelius is giving Christian employers a year to get their priorities straight and align their consciences with the anti-life agenda of the Obama Administration,” Franzonello adds.

Under the new health care edict, all health insurance plans issued must provide coverage for FDA-approved contraceptives without co-pay or deductible charges. Drugs like Ella and Plan B, marketed as so-called “emergency contraceptives,” have been endorsed by the FDA.

While these drugs function as contraceptives, they also operate as abortifacients. They are designed to break down the lining of the uterus so that the uterine wall cannot support the implantation, nidation, and continuing growth of a developing embryo. In the eyes of Christians who subscribe to the religious belief and biological fact that human life begins at conception, these drugs can cause a chemical abortion.

The Cardinal Newman Society, a group that advocates for Catholic principles in Catholic universities, blasted the new contraceptive mandate. “It is the greatest irony, that by worshiping the cult of ‘choice,’ the Obama Administration has determined that religious organizations lack the freedom to act in fidelity to their beliefs. The White House has sold the First Amendment for a few pennies of political support from the abortion lobby.”

Two universities have already filed suit in federal court arguing that the abortion drug mandate violates federal conscience law protections. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Colorado Christian University and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina in those lawsuits.

Become a Sustaining Partner of our Work

You can become a Sustaining Partner with automatic monthly deductions from your checking account or credit card. Click HERE to access the Sustaining Member form. Your gift will go even further than ever because:

• Our paperwork will be reduced.
• Our income will be more predictable, leading to improved cash management.
• Our administrative costs will be reduced, putting your gift to work immediately.
• It is simpler and saves time for you!