"We want to see every child flourish mind, body, and soul, but the reality is that we're created male and female, and you cannot actually change a person's sex," Emilie Kao of The Heritage Foundation tells Newsmax.
She says children are being taught something that is "false and very misleading" and adds, "The consequences of them following the path of a gender transition is that they could be put onto experimental hormones that would block their puberty, and then eventually they could even have surgery on themselves, and that would lead to ultimately the sterilization of children."
The consequences of that, she asserts, are something children are "far too young to understand."
"We've hosted several events at Heritage highlighting de-transitioners' voices," the attorney shares. "In the United Kingdom the high court has recently put a limit on children under 16 [where] they cannot give informed consent to receive these experimental uses of hormones."
Kao advises the U.S. to take a closer look at these and other situations.
"This is often times related to gender dysphoria, which is a mental health issue. Changing the way a child's body looks doesn't address the underlying distress that they feel," says Kao, a participant in the Promise to America's Children project. "That's what we hear all the time from de-transitioners, is that after they went on hormones or even after they had surgeries they found that they still had underlying distress, and they deeply regretted what had been done to their bodies."
Kao, who previously worked at the United Nations, serves as director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
