Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently ordered state authorities to open investigations of any and all transgender children, their parents, and even their doctors for accepting their gender identity and providing transgender health care to them. Providing health care to transgender children is child abuse in the governor's ignorant opinion and child protective services were ordered to treat it as such.
The governor's order was in effect long enough to see the first investigations take place including a high profile case involving a state employee of child protective services that was effectively accused of abusing their own child by accepting their gender identity.
Fortunately, a federal judge issued an injunction against Governor Abbott's order on Friday evening.
Abbott’s Feb. 22 directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to consider gender-affirming care for minors to be “child abuse” violates the separation of powers because it has the effect of a new law “without new legislation,” Judge Amy Clark Meachum said Friday in Austin. [...]
During Friday’s hearing, an employee with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services told the judge that she is resigning rather than help enforce Abbott’s order.
“It feels like we are stepping into a dangerous territory,” Randa Mulanax, an investigations officer with Child Protective Services, said under questioning by a lawyer with the ACLU. “It’s a slippery slope of what would be next, what other medical or private decisions would the government try to interfere with?”
Indeed, what other private decisions would the Republican state government try to interfere with?
Abortion immediately jumps out as an example, but Republicans haven't stopped there and they won't stop at criminalizing transgender children and their families. Republicans do not actually believe in personal freedom, liberty, and privacy beyond what gives them power. The GOP's idea of limit government is cutting taxes while investigating the genitals of children.
I do not live in Texas but Abbott's order and the outpouring of heartache it caused was enough to personally affect me as well. Republicans tend to mimic each other because group think is the only way they know how to think and if Texas is able to criminalize transgender children then other states will too. And they won't stop there. The next step is limits and restrictions on adults like the so-called 'bathroom bills' we've already seen.
Transitioning is always worth it, but the older you get the more difficult it becomes. Any child who knows who they are at such a young age is truly blessed because they have an opportunity to block permanent changes that older people like myself couldn't. Kids who receive gender affirming care will never have to go through the wrong puberty. They won't have to spend the rest of their lives fighting an uphill battle with their own body.
Actual child abuse would be denying that to transgender children. It's unspeakably cruel to even consider it and anyone who tries to is truly damned.