By John Klar

America is being torn apart by a “scientific” dispute over the appropriateness of hormone-blockers for minor children. The safety of these drugs is in question, as well as whether children are being fully assessed for mental health issues that may underlie gender dysphoria. A number of responsible states have initiated legislation to ban their use, most recently joined by Tennessee.

Meanwhile, another group of states are rushing to shield these drug regimens for kids from parental or legal interference. Vermont, which eagerly embraced eugenics and forced sterilization a century ago, is aggressively creating a modern version of Underground Railroad for people in other states (with no age limits) to freely obtain hormone-meddling “therapies” in the Green Mountains.

John Klar

Vermont has been a frontrunner in providing abortions through all stages of pregnancy.  Progressives shrieked in feigned panic when Roe v. Wade was overturned, claiming that women’s “rights” to infanticide were thereby threatened — even though Roe acknowledged fetal viability and the existence of a second life meriting legal protections at some stage of development in the womb.  “Women’s rights” became the clarion call in Vermont’s 2022 elections, in which nearly 77% of Vermont voters voted “Yes” to a constitutional amendment (Proposal 5) enshrining abortion ’til birth.

Proposal 5 was also a Trojan horse to etch the “right” to puberty-blockers for children into law, using the vague language “personal reproductive autonomy.” Having regained a progressive supermajority in the election by this ruse, the Vermont Legislature has wasted no time pushing through novel extremist legislation to codify the practice of administering experimental puberty hormone–blockers to children. H.89 passed the House on February 10 by a resounding child-mutilating margin of 130-13 and is now in the Vermont Senate.

Progressives have led the shoddy pseudo-“scientific” path in eugenics, lobotomies, mRNA vaccines, and now puberty-blockers. All were untested initiatives launched with ideological bunk that eclipsed unbiased assessment. Meanwhile, the erstwhile leadership toward harmful, sterilizing puberty-blockers in the U.K. and Sweden have both reversed course in response to growing scientific awareness of health risks as well as the lack of sufficient research (much like for lobotomies, eugenics, and untested COVID vaccines).

But no such common sense has deterred Vermont. H.89 defines “legally protected healthcare” to include “gender-affirming care,” an oxymoronic perversion by those refusing to care about the risks of these drugs to others’ children.  Vermont’s callous ideological blunder goes farther, creating legal protections for these practices that include: a new cause of action for tortious interference against those who “interfere,” shielded from Vermont’s SLAPP statute; defining legal efforts to interfere with these practices as “abusive litigation”; prohibiting courts “from ordering a person to give testimony or a statement or produce documents or other things for use in connection with abusive litigation involving legally protected health care activity”; expanding access to the Address Confidentiality Program to permit patient anonymity; establishing a misdemeanor crime against persons (parents?) who “interfere” with these dubious practices; and defining insurance coverage for any of these procedures as a “protected practice.”

H.89 also extends specific shields for Vermont’s unscrupulous medical experiments against contrary legal requirements in other jurisdictions.  It prohibits:

A public agency from cooperating in an interstate investigation or proceeding seeking to impose civil or criminal liability upon a person or entity for obtaining or providing legally protected health care [and] prohibit[s] the extradition of a nonfugitive person in connection with abusive litigation in another jurisdiction [and] prohibit[s] a court from issuing a summons when a prosecution is pending in another state concerning legally protected health care activity or where a grand jury investigation concerning legally protected health care activity has commenced or is about to commence for a criminal violation of a law of the other state[.]

The contrast between Vermont’s effort and a multitude of other states seeking to ban these same practices predicts an eventual showdown over the eugenics-echoing absurdity of this headlong plunge into irreversible damage to young children that extends far beyond sterility and lifetime dependence. Recent studies suggest that these drugs dramatically increase risks of stroke and heart attack and that “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.”

In a circuitous perversion of logic, those who deceived the public regarding Proposal 5 now justify this bizarre puberty-blocker legislation by claiming that Vermonters embrace these practices as “reproductive liberties” for little kids:

“The Shield Bill (H.89) reinforces our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of Vermonters in making personal health choices,” stated Speaker of the House, Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, following the bill’s passage. “Safe access to reproductive care has always been a top priority, and Vermonters showed their resounding support for reproductive rights last November when they voted to enshrine it in our constitution.

Twisted logic is familiar in Vermont, in its similarly “Progressive” eugenics history:

Though eugenicists claimed they based their views on science, the Vermont eugenics survey actually responded to increased immigration from Europe and Canada. … Then in 1942, another U.S. Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, raised legal questions about the practice and discouraged further sterilization. Vermont, however, continued sterilizing its people until 1963. In the end, Vermont sterilized more than 250 people it deemed degenerate — mostly women.

Time will tell how many children in the extremist 21st-century Green Mountain State will be subjected to damaging pharmaceuticals without parental consent. Perhaps the State will one day find the integrity to apologize to these children and their families, as it did for its foolhardy eugenics initiatives.

Vermont’s arrogant legislators are on the record in this high-stakes battle for the future health of children. In time, accurate science — and common sense — will prevail.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. This commentary originally appeared at American Thinker.