“I went for two appointments and after the second one I had my letter to go get on cross-sex hormones.”
“[My therapist] didn’t really go into what my gender dysphoria might be stemming from. We only did a few sessions.”
“When everything that I set out to do was done, I still felt incomplete.”
These are the words of the young men and women who recently spoke to 60 Minutes about why they left the transgender movement. In each case, they sought help for gender dysphoria and depression and were very quickly put on a path toward cross-sex hormones and surgery only to experience regret after the fact. Sadly, stories like theirs are becoming all too common. Amid a rise in rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) the transgender movement continues to push for unquestioning affirmation when a young person is struggling with the feeling that they were born in the wrong body and encourage young adults, teenagers, and even young children to undergo puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.
This year marks 23 years since Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide, and as in previous years, the reasons that patients sought to end their own lives were primarily loss of autonomy and a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable. Additionally, over half expressed a concern that they were “becoming a burden” to their family and caregivers. In other words, fear and discouragement have been major factors motivating people to end their own lives, and rather than being offered help and hope, they were offered lethal drugs.
And yet, as people continue to turn to assisted suicide out of fear, the assisted suicide lobby consistently calls for the erosion of any safeguards that are in place. This is because the logic of assisted suicide allows no limits. Even when proponents claim that safeguards will be in place, those safeguards without fail begin to erode within decades or less. Dr.Joshua Brisoce, a hospice and palliative care physician and professor at Duke University, recently pointed out where the logic of assisted suicide leads, writing,
If suffering warrants assisted suicide, why should seemingly arbitrary limits like terminal illness or even autonomous choice limit it? For surely non-terminally ill, incapacitated patients can suffer — and for longer than a cancer patient with 6 months to live!
Recent reports have found that the U.S. birthrate dropped by 4% in 2020, bringing the number of births in the U.S. to the lowest number since 1979. While it is not unusual for birth rates to decline during a season of economic and political uncertainty, it is unlikely that this year’s drop is just a “blip on the radar” considering that birth rates were declining prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and hit a 32-year-low in 2018.
Alongside the drop in birth rates, there are also rising rates of hopelessness and despair among young Americans, a rejection of marriage and family, and a growing embrace of anti-natalism, an ideology that believes people have an obligation not to have children,usually rooted in fears of a looming climate catastrophe.
When HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was nominated to his current role, pro-life leaders rightly pointed out that Becerra has a longstanding record of abortion extremism. During his confirmation hearings, when he was asked directly why he had voted against a ban on the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortions, Becerra refused to give a straight answer. Now, in a House subcommittee hearing, he has denied that partial-birth abortions are illegal.
In a hearing for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Health Subcommittee on Wednesday, Representative Gus Bilirakis asked Becerra if he agrees that partial-birth abortion is illegal. In response, Becerra claimed that “there is no law that deals specifically with the term partial-birth abortion.” This is not true. Partial-birth abortion is specifically prohibited in U.S. Code § 1531. Representative John Joyce pointed this out later in the hearing and also drew attention to the fact that the law gives a clear definition of partial-birth abortion. Even though Representatives Bilirakis, Joyce, and Dan Crenshaw all pressed Becerra on the issue, he refused to say that partial-birth abortion is illegal or that he would enforce the law.
Recent polling data from the Pew Research Center suggests that 59% of Americans support legalized abortion in all or most cases. This is one percentage point lower than it was at this time in 2020, but it is still a tragically high number. If this poll is representative of real views, a majority of Americans would vote to keep this murderous practice legal.
The pro-life movement has spent decades fighting to make abortion not just illegal, but unthinkable, and we will continue to fight until that is the case. In order to successfully eradicate abortion, the fact that the majority of Americans are ambivalent or supportive of abortion needs to change. So we have to ask ourselves, what can we do to change people’s hearts and minds on abortion?
President Biden has demonstrated a radical commitment to advancing the abortion lobby’s agenda during his first 100 days in office, but on the state level, the pro-life movement has been making major strides! Over 500 pro-life bills have been introduced across 46 states since January of this year. Of those, 61 have been signed into law, and abortion activists are worried.The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute writes, “If this trend continues, 2021 will end up as the most damaging antiabortion state legislative session in a decade—and perhaps ever.” In just four days last week, 28 pro-life laws were signed in seven different states!
The Guttmacher Institute compared this year’s wave of pro-life legislation with 2011, the year they previously considered the most devastating to the abortion industry since abortion was legalized in all 50 states. By this time in 2011, 42 pro-life laws had been signed.
