by Carol Kauffman
During the second reading of S37, Senator Lyons made an attempt to make a case that “sexual ambiguity” was a historical example of “gender dysphoria”.
“I will take a step back,” Lyons stated, “historically, we’ve had children born with sexual ambiguity for many, many years. And so what we’ve seen is that sometimes a child will be born. It looks like it may be a male, so the child will be raised as a male. Similarly, we might see someone that looks like a female and frequently there may be surgical things that happened right then that happened in the past.”.
With just a google search Senator Lyons could have easily accessed better information than she received from her list of committee experts. “Ambiguous genitalia is a rare condition in which an infant’s external genitals don’t appear to be clearly either male or female. In a baby with ambiguous genitalia, the genitals may be incompletely developed or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes” Mayo Clinic
Senator Lyons continued, “Today. There are medical standards, and data-informed practices that are used to determine when and how gender-affirming care is put into place. That is determined by just like any of our other health care provisions, is determined through professional medical practice. And so there are as I read the letter from one of our very outstanding medical practitioners in this state, that those clinical determinations are data-informed.”
Is Senator Lyons’ “data-informed” assertion correct? Did Senator Lyons make sure State Senators had access to the following empirical data from her list of expert testimony?
- Data on youth historical suicide rates through 2023 (if youth are committing suicide, today, because of the lack of exclusive “gender-affirming” care, then history should also show an exponential rate of mysterious youth suicide because “gender-affirming” health care was not available)
- Data on Lupron and side effects
- Data on cross-sex hormones and side effects
- Data on double mastectomies and side effects
- Data on Phalloplasty surgery and side effects
- Data on Vaginoplasty surgery and side effects
- Data on the adolescent brain
- Data on parental and adolescent “gender-affirming” informed consent
- Data on youth resolving childhood gender dysphoria
- Data on detransitioners
Both youth patients and their parents are reporting the lack of informed consent in growing testimonies and lawsuits against “gender-affirming” health care. Was legislative informed consent also missing through the legislative process of H89 and now S37?
Vermont Family Alliance submitted a public record request for the “data-informed” documents from Senator Lyons’ committee experts referenced by her during the second reading of S37.
The author is an Addison resident with Vermont Family Alliance.