Connecticut is impairing the rights of transgender patients by making it harder for them to sue.
March 10, 2024
Most physicians like myself can make a comfortable living caring for the sick. But if you really want to make big bucks, the way to do so is to convince healthy people that there is something wrong with them. Convince women that their breasts are too small, or their rear ends are misshaped. Convince men that their noses are too big.
The latest market is to convince people that they were born the wrong gender. This of course is silly. If you have XY chromosomes you are a male and if you have XX chromosomes, you are a female. This applies not only to humans but to the entire mammalian kingdom.
But some members of my profession are coining money by convincing confused children and adolescents – many with other psychiatric issues – that they are males instead of females or females instead of males. They are using hormone treatments to chemically castrate them and, in some instances, subjecting them to brutal surgical treatments that remove or add breasts and destroy and rearrange parts of their genitalia. This sometimes results in infertility and sexual dysfunction for the rest of their lives.
Connecticut has been in the forefront of this gender affirming movement with pediatric and adolescent treatments available at both Connecticut Children’s Hospital and Yale. Planned Parenthood, which has fifteen locations in Connecticut, is also promoting gender affirming treatment. But more conservative states have reacted to these treatments by banning them. Thus, patients seeking this care come to Connecticut.
While those promoting gender affirming care have characterized their opposition as MAGA yahoos, religious nuts, homophobes and transphobes, they are now encountering a much more formidable group – the trial lawyers. Multiple doctors have been sued by disgruntled patients who are now infertile and cannot function sexually.
Furthermore, gender affirming care has been practiced in Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries for over a decade (longer than in the United States) and the long-term data on its efficacy is now available. And the verdict is that it does more harm than good. This means that trial lawyers now have convincing expert witnesses to speak to juries.
Dr. Kaltiala was one of the first psychiatrists in Finland to institute gender-affirming care. But after a decade of treating this condition and analyzing her data on its efficacy, she wrote an article with the following title:
“Gender Affirming Care is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.
In her article, she states the following:
I felt an increasing obligation to patients, to medicine, and to the truth, to speak outside of Finland against the widespread transitioning of gender-distressed minors. I have been particularly concerned about American medical societies, who as a group continue to assert that children know their “authentic” selves, and a child who declares a transgender identity should be affirmed and started on treatment.
Medical organizations are supposed to transcend politics in favor of upholding standards that protect patients. However, in the U.S. these groups—including the American Academy of Pediatrics—have been actively hostile to the message my colleagues and I are urging.”
Viewing similar data, England has prohibited gender affirming treatments before the age of eighteen.
But liberal states like Connecticut are not buying this data and gender affirming treatments are not only being promoted by doctors, but public school teachers are also encouraging students they view as potentially transgender to seek care without notifying their parents.
But if these patients are allowed to sue, transgender clinics and school psychologists may soon be filing for bankruptcy. Thus, a law proposed in Connecticut (HB214) has language stating patients can only receive help from the State of Connecticut to enforce subpoenas, summons and in some cases, extradition, if there are “similar laws” in their home states – whatever that means. This makes it much more difficult for unhappy patients to sue.
To add insult to injury, Connecticut created a cause of action for doctors to countersue these patients for their legal expenses! This was done by a bureaucratic fatwa, not by the legislature.
But this is a battle the gender affirming movement cannot win. Not when there are piles of money on the table. Soon there will be deep voices on our televisions saying “Have you been injured by gender affirming surgery. Call 1-800-TRANSLAW now. Our operators are standing by.” That is unless Connecticut bans these lawsuits completely or allocates taxpayer money to compensate those injured.
Follow Dr. Joe Bentivegna on Twitter (X) @joebentivegnamd