(LifeSiteNews) — On Thursday, the left-wing governments of Minnesota and Washington state enacted laws to become “havens” for those seeking to thwart other states’ laws against abortion or gender “transitions.”
The Associated Press reports that on the same day, Democrat Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Jay Inslee of Washington signed laws ensuring that their respective states’ judicial systems will not be used to cooperate with out-of-state warrants, subpoenas, court orders, or extradition requests pertaining to abortion restrictions or surgical or chemical “gender reassignment” procedures.
“Freedom of choice is a health care issue,” declared Inslee. “We are protecting access to health care.”
“Look, I don’t know how hard this concept is to understand,” said Walz. “When someone else is given basic rights, others don’t lose theirs. We’re not cutting a pie here. We’re giving basic rights to every single Minnesotan.”
The measures are the latest in liberal jurisdictions’ efforts to push back against a trend of states cracking down on “gender transitions” (particularly for minors), as well as to preserve abortion-on-demand in a world without Roe v. Wade, whose overturn last year allowed states to directly ban abortion for the first time in half a century.
To preserve abortion “access” in a post-Roe America, the abortion lobby and its allies are pursuing multiple strategies, including easing distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, attempting to enshrine “rights” to the practice in state constitutions, and attempting to construct new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states. President Joe Biden has also called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand the Roe status quo by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws.
As for the governors’ talk of preserving “health care,” evidence shows that “affirming” a child’s confusion about his or her biological sex carries severe harms, especially when such affirmation takes the form of physically transformative medical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The issue is grimly illustrated in the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself after trying to live as a man for three years.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject.
