Vermont's Bernie Sanders was recently asked about puberty-blockers for children who want to present themselves as members of the opposite sex.  Vermont's progressives lead the nation — and perhaps the world — in propping open the pharmaceutical door for profit-churning experimental drug "therapies" for prepubescent children, despite a lack of FDA approval and clear warnings of multiple health risks.  Bernie is bent on keeping that door wide open.

In a December 9 email to a Vermont constituent, Bernie trundled out the far-out left's standard screed in defense of the indefensible:

Let me begin by saying that the recent surge of anti-transgender bills in state legislatures across the country are discriminatory and shameful. Transgender people face some of the worst discrimination in the United States, especially transgender people of color, and the harassment and outright violence they face every day is disgraceful. This discrimination has profound effects on transgender youth who may not feel safe expressing their identity with friends and family, at home, or at school, and can have long-term mental and physical health repercussions.

Implicit here is the Marxist intrusion between parents and their minor children — since young children "may not feel safe ... with family, at home," the government will intervene to protect them from "long-term mental and physical health repercussions."  The true long-term repercussions are being willfully avoided, in derogation of parents' rights to oversee their children's health and safety.

As scholar Ryan T. Anderson has warned for years, these drugs cause permanent infertility as well as physical and psychological trauma:

Not only does a trans-affirming therapeutic approach run the risk of prolonging transgender identities in children who otherwise would have grown out of them, so too it is entirely experimental. It is not supported by any rigorous science. And there is no way of knowing if it is even safe, let alone effective.

In a recent interview hosted by a college ministry called the Christian Union, Dr. Anderson expounded on the current legal and cultural wrangling over transgenderism that undermines privacy, physical safety, liberty, equality, the concept of family, and bodily integrity.  These concerns are exponentially compounded where children are concerned.

Dr. Anderson explains (at 32:10):

What they're doing here is they're using a drug that's approved for precocious puberty ... to treat a different condition, which would be indefinitely blocking puberty. Never allowing a child to go through natural, normal, biological development. This is entirely experimental. We have no studies whatsoever on what the long term outcomes are. ... We also don't know what this means not just for their self-understanding but what this means for their bodily health. It's not just your sexual organs that develop during puberty. There's a whole cascading, interlocking network of physical and mental changes, the brain being one of the most major organs that develop during puberty. And we just have no idea what the consequences are.

Extremist leftists have derided rightly alarmed child-protecting voices.  PolitiFact in 2021 declared, "No, young children cannot take hormones or change their sex":

The last step in transitioning to another gender, gender reassignment surgery, is only available to those 18 and older in the United States.

The onset of puberty is the baseline for medical intervention. ...

Puberty blockers, which suppress the release of testosterone and estrogen during puberty, allow adolescents "more time to explore their gender nonconformity and other developmental issues," and can be used for a few years, the standards of care say. One guideline for giving the medication says parents or guardians must consent to the treatment and also provide support to the youth during the process.

This is patently false.  In Vermont, puberty-blockers are readily available to prepubescent children, as are "gender reassignment" surgeries for "emancipated minors."  Unconsenting parents are readily eliminated from these decisions.

A pending bill (sponsored by Vermont trans legislator and drag queen Taylor Small) boldly advocates for parent-free experimentation on minor children, with no age limit:

MINORS' ACCESS TO NONSURGICAL, GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE

A minor who identifies as transgender may give consent to receive hormone blockers and any other legally authorized nonsurgical, gender-affirming care or treatment from a licensed health care professional working within the health care professional's authorized scope of practice. Consent under this section shall not be subject to disaffirmance due to minority of the individual providing consent. The consent of the individual's parent or guardian shall not be necessary to authorize the minor's access to legally authorized nonsurgical, gender-affirming care or treatment.

Vermont's "best practices" for child health care and educational standards ensure that children at any age can depend on the government to conceal their "gender identity" decisions from unsuspecting parents.  A Progressive supermajority now dominates the Vermont Legislature.  H. 659 is likely to become law, to further shield what is already being inflicted on minors.  Incoming Senate president pro tempore Phil Baruth recently stated:

"We absolutely oppose what I see as a demonization of various parts of our party, including trans youth who are trying to figure out their identities and working with our doctors and families to accomplish that," he said.

He added that he "sides with medical experts" when it comes to potential conflicts between families and the state.

Alas, the experts have not studied the long-term impacts of these drugs and surgeries on adults, let alone on minor children whose minds and bodies are still developing when these ideological Frankensteinian experiments are inflicted.  Australia has recently joined the chorus of international hesitation about these hasty interventions:

The Family Court reportedly heard from several experts about developments in Sweden, Finland, and England, where systematic reviews of the evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones revealed a weak evidence base for such interventions for minors. Both Sweden and Finland have already pivoted away from pediatric medical transition and reverted back to a more cautious psychotherapeutic approach, and England is expected to follow suit in the coming months following the completion of an independent review of its youth gender services.

In his December 9 email in response to complaints about puberty-blockers, the presidential aspirant octogenarian responded unresponsively:

Transgender Americans should be able to live freely and in communities that recognize and affirm their gender identity, without fear of discrimination. ... I firmly believe that transgender rights are human rights, and I will continue pushing for a day when all Americans are free to live without any type of discrimination.

Peddling harmful drugs for young children behind parents' backs, Bernie Sanders should take a "hard look" at what he is "pushing" for children's puberty-blockers, and parents' rights.  All of them.

Image: AFGE via Flickr.