NEW YORK – Applauding an executive order that prohibits the federal government from promoting or funding transgender procedures for children, Bishop Robert Barron highlighted that “helping young people accept their bodies and their vocation as women and men is the true path to freedom and happiness.”
President Donald Trump signed the executive order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” on Jan. 28, which declares that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” transgender surgeries for children, “and it will vigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” these procedures.
“I welcome the President’s Executive Order prohibiting the promotion of federal funding of procedures that, based on a false understanding of human nature, attempt to change a child’s sex,” Barron, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, said in a Jan. 29 statement.
“So many young people who have been victims of this ideological crusade have profound regrets over its life altering consequences, such as infertility and lifelong dependence on costly hormone therapies that have significant side effects,” Barron, the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester continued.
“It is unacceptable that our children are encouraged to undergo destructive medical interventions instead of receiving access to authentic and bodily-unitive care,” he said.
Explaining the executive order, Trump called the ability of adults to change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions a “radical and false claim,” adding that “this dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
The president also said that countless children regret the transgender surgeries they receive.
“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the executive order states. “Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
The executive order classifies “child” or “children” as an individual under the age of 19.
The executive order instructs federal agencies to rescind or amend all policies that rely on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). It also instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or “other identity-based confusion.”
Barron said this aspect of the order is also important.
“I also applaud the Executive Order’s aim to identify and develop research-based therapies to aid young people struggling with gender dysphoria,” Barron said. “These individuals are loved by God and possess the same inherent dignity that all persons do.”
“They deserve care that heals rather than harms,” Barron added, also highlighting Pope Francis’s message in Dignitas Infinita that “we are called to accept the gift of our bodies created in God’s image and likeness as male and female.”
