John Klar: Sen. Baruth is wrong — parents should make the decisions

Vermont Sen. Phil Baruth recently proclaimed that the state of Vermont should intervene between children and their parents in their sexuality relating to deciding to “change genders” with gender blocking hormones or male/female gender hormones. The proposal is phrased as scientific — Baruth states that the “medical experts” have determined these methods are sound.

state of Vermont

Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden

But what if parents do not share Sen. Baruth’s conclusion? Is the right and duty of parents to make decisions for their minor children to be supplanted by government bureaucrats, medical “experts,” hospitals and pharmaceutical companies?

Judeo-Christian tradition affirms what most all cultures embrace – parents are responsible for their children’s upbringing.

American law and education practice has largely respected this nearly-universal human precept of parental responsibility, though “medical professionals,” often ethically compromised by commercial or ideological interests, have at times deviated from this arrangement. Phil Baruth recently referred to abortion and “affirming gender identity” as areas where parents should be opposed:

Do I support gender-affirming medical care? The question is yes. I think in general Democratic majorities in the house and senate do support that and 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 their doctors and their families to accomplish that. …[W]e’re talking about medical professionals working with the families. That’s not just MD’s, but in some cases therapists or psychiatrists trying to help to determine the best path for that child and that family. Um, so I tend to be the sort of person to side with medical experts on these issues.

Mr. Baruth “sides with medical experts” to “help to determine the best path for that child and that family.” But the child and family may disagree on that best path, in which case Phil “sides” against the parents.

During the eugenics era, led by similarly-minded progressives “generating discussion,” parents’ views were dismissed by “medical professionals.” And when lobotomies became widely popularized, how many families were “hostile” to this “best path” for their minor children?

It is not merely long-past ideas proven wrong that threaten children – gender hormone treatments do not much differ from eugenics efforts to use science to alter genetics. But what of flu shots, COVID vaccines, or Human Papillomavirus Vaccines (HPV)? All of these can cause serious side effects.

HPV vaccines carry serious risks, especially for minors. Yet the CDC still recommends them.

How rare or severe do harms need to be for parents to retain decision–making? Many parents have questioned another drug – bovine somatotropin, aka bST, bGH, or bovine growth hormone. The FDA approves this pharmaceutical hormone augmentation for milk and meat.

The federal government obligingly preserves trademarks for pharmaceutical companies on its websites, raising a reasonable worry – conflicts of interest between families versus medical manufacturers, health regulators, and “medical professionals.” (Remember Oxycontin?) bGH has been banned in Europe and Canada. The Cancer Prevention Coalition and other groups are concerned it may be harmful to humans. The American Cancer Society cautions that bST’s safety remains unclear.

The American Academy of Pediatrics now advises using new drugs (particularly Wegovy, which lacks long-term studies) on children to combat obesity. Could this advice be compromised by drug companies or profit-driven hospitals?

If socioeconomic status makes kids fat, then what group is getting drugs if not the poor? Moreover, the rationale that physicians should destigmatize and support children (which echoes transgender surgeries) has zero relation to the safety or efficacy of these novel uses of drugs on obese children.

Wegovy’s website cautions about side effects. This review of drugs should concern parents considering prepubescent hormone blockers on their children, even if Phil Baruth expresses no concern: the children are the ones risking harms. Phil Baruth and the Progressive Democrats in Vermont have exposed children to active shooter drills, despite ample evidence this is traumatizing and causes profound anxiety for many children. Medical professionals did not prescribe that practice.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of state of Vermont

13 thoughts on “John Klar: Sen. Baruth is wrong — parents should make the decisions

  1. They aren’t “inept fools with little power”. They are inept fools with lots of power. That’s the crisis.

  2. Leave the children and parents alone. The way we raise our children is our business not the government. Leave our rights alone

    • Ms Starr: Your statement is overly simplistic. So many parents, sickeningly so, participate in their children’s transitioning. Seems there’s something in it for them like “look how cool I am,” depending on who their crowd is. They exploit their children. I recently met one of them. I was sickened by her inappropriate, out of context boasting that her child was transgender.

      Pro transitioning ‘experts’ talk about medical experts, schools workers and parents making the decision. But, we don’t talk about legal representation for the children. Every child, without exception, involved in transitioning needs a guardian ad litem. Legal representation. There needs to be an in-depth investigation into who is influencing the child.

      Parents do not own children, they are not property. Many parents do very terrible things to their children, including teach them religious ignorance.

  3. Prior to birth, Vermont’s Constitution gives a pregnant person the legal right to hire a professional to kill her unborn baby. After it emerges into the world, the child belongs to Montpelier’s finest…

  4. The “Medical Experts” are now nothing but Mules for Big Pharma, they are pill pushers.
    Have we learned nothing at all from what we are looking at daily? the Covid scam, the thousands of people dropping dead suddenly from vaccines..the opioid crisis..
    What is the common thing here? BIG PHARMA

    John people are NOT Trusting Doctors- that is why the medical system is collapsing.
    Look at the exodus out of the profession by doctors and nurses because the good and honest ones want nothing to do with what they see is going on.
    So why on earth should laws be passed based upon what these doctors are saying?
    Doctors are not on our side at all.
    Doctors are injecting people with experimental drugs that are killing and permanently damaging the health of untold numbers of people.
    Doctors are mutilating the bodies of children that are as young as toddlers and they are now trying to get at infants.

    The medical profession is as sold out, dirty and corrupt now as the three letter agencies and every other BIG thing there is.
    Why doesn’t someone look into who is paying this man to hold these views.. I’m sure it’s a pharmaceutical company.

    People have got to do deep research today to see who is pulling the strings on all these puppets we call “representation”.

  5. mr. baruth seems always to use the humanistic theory to anchor his morals and resulting misguided legislation. We have certainly seen the results of 5 decades of this approach, with all its socialist variations and trappings not succeed- in Vermont nor anywhere else.
    I wish him great success in passing legislation to eliminate parental rights, consent and responsibility for their children. It will be the start of the end of socialist elitists controlling Vermont’s legislation and bureaucracy.

    • Socialist commies have no MORALS Frank, and phillis baruth is the epitome of a nazi socialist. he is a professor you know…

      • Exactly my point. By whatever name they are called, liberal, socialist, democrat, progressive…these people seem to consider themselves above all others, omnipotent in their hubristic and humanist beliefs. I contend that baruth, krowinski and a hundred others in state government lust and demand power, are ignorant to any sort of higher power. The moral compass they use is their own, guided by self interest and the desire for power and control over others.
        The recent fervor over gas stoves or transgender rights exemplifies their need to force their desired outcome, regardless of cost or harm to others or society as a whole. The idea that carbon is bad in any form- or that society must embrace the mental illness of gender dysphoria is but a means to continue controlling society. The recent passage of Article 22 allegedly codified abortion rights, but the additional verbiage of “compelling state interest” also exposes the lust for power and disregard for moral and just laws for those they purport to serve. The end result will be anarchy, or a return to values and morals based in belief in a higher power than man.

        • OMG, who wants to control people and are more self-interested than religious ‘leaders’. Actually, politicians and religious ‘leaders’ are cut from the same cloth. Humanists are far more moral than either of same. They are sheep, they think for themselves, which we all should do more of.

          • But Joy, no one is forcing you to be religious. No one is forcing their self-interest on you … with the exception of their asking to be left alone. The public-school monopoly is the epitome of tyranny. Taxpayers are forced to fund it. Parents are forced to abide by its tenants. Students are deemed truant if they don’t attend.

            C. S. Lewis was right. ‘It would, indeed, be better to live under robber barons than under these omnipotent moral busybodies…’.

            If your self-interest is this humanist morality, please, leave me alone – and I will afford you the same courtesy.

      • Bean: OMG. Your language will never heal this sad state.

        My observation of compulsive negative thinkers is that they become uglier and uglier every time they speak. And are their own worse enemies.

    • Mr Bammo: Have you ever listened to humanist speak about morals and ethics. You will find that they are much more moral and logical than the sheep you will find in churches.

  6. Yeah, just what you need a carpetbagger legislator telling parents in Vermont they
    have no authority in raising their children……………….. inept fools with little power !!

    Wake up people, they don’t care it’s all about their agenda.

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