This month saw a series of revelations, policy developments, and personal testimonies disseminated in the media related to the emotionally and physically destructive ideology and practice of trying to change an individual’s gender.
For context, NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project has sponsored several shareholder proposals that called for companies to end health insurance policies that discriminate against those who seek to detransition, after having been misled or deceived about alleged medical and psychological benefits associated with attempting to make such changes.
Among December’s news:
- Detransitioner Prisha Mosley — whose story was included in reports by NLPC to shareholders in support of its proposals — wrote for FoxNews.com that she made a terrible mistake in trusting gender “experts” who were actually just “winging it,” leaving her with “lifelong scars, both physical and psychological.” “When I see the life-altering consequences I have no choice but to carry, I wonder how any medical professional, institution or organization entrusted with the lives of children could justify this recklessness. How could they gamble with the future of thousands of children’s lives, including mine? The truth is this: the doctors never considered my future. They considered their ideologies, personal agendas and wallets above the lives of the very ones they were treating.”
- Another detransitioner, Chloe Cole (pictured above) — also featured in our investor reports and who presented our shareholder proposal at Disney‘s annual meeting in 2024 — told Fox News about complications she has suffered from gender procedures. “As soon as gender was in the picture, none of my doctors or psychologists asked the real questions that they should have. The entire focus was on my feelings and what I wanted rather than what I really needed in that moment.” Cole said her parents were warned that if they did not allow her to transition, she would likely commit suicide, according to Fox News. “My legal guardians were forced to make this decision under duress. But even if my parents had supported transitioning medically from the start, no parent or any adult, ultimately, has a right to determine whether a child gets to be chemically sterilized or mutilated.”
- The House of Representatives voted to pass the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would make it a crime to “knowingly perform, or attempt to perform, genital or bodily mutilation on another person who is a minor.” Violators could be sentenced up to 10 years in prison.
- Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a series of measures to end transgender procedures on minors. “These procedures include pharmaceutical or surgical interventions of specified types that attempt to align a child’s physical appearance or body with an asserted identity different from their sex,” an HHS press release stated, and “proposed rulemaking [would] bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
- HHS also terminated federal grants of $18 million-$20 million to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has recommended that pediatricians provide “gender-affirming care” for children.
As for Corporate America, companies need to finally eliminate coverage for such procedures for their employees’ minor dependents, as we warned in September, echoing Chloe Cole’s message to Disney in April 2024 and Claire Abernathy’s advisory to Visa in January this year.
