Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) called for a nationwide ban on gender transition surgeries for minors, saying the federal government needed to stop the "barbaric ... mutilation of children."
Johnson's remarks came during his opening statement of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the "Dangers and Due Process Violations of 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Children."
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"Even a parent has no right to sexually transition a young child," said Johnson, the subcommittee chairman, explaining the importance of "protecting children from abuse and physical harm."
Johnson explained that general safety laws, such as wearing a seat belt, and minimum ages for driving, drinking alcohol, and smoking, exist to protect the public, despite their non-libertarian nature.
The Louisiana Republican also spent time dismantling the American medical establishment's virtually unanimous support for child sex change procedures by showing evidence that doctors are performing the interventions while "know[ing] almost nothing about the outcomes for these children."
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) compared the procedures to other harmful medical crazes, calling gender transitions a "sexual lobotomy."
"So-called gender-affirming care is anything but affirming and caring," Johnson said. "This is adults deciding to permanently alter the bodies of children who do not have the capacity to make life-altering decisions on their own."
Johnson went on to mention that some of the "unspeakable harms on helpless children" are done to "affirm the adults' worldview that gender is somehow fluid," adding that social pressures and academia are coercing impressionable children, while doctors are attempting to shut out parents from the decision-making process.
"What is even more alarming is that the central tenet of the transgender movement and its allies is to exclude parents as much as possible from making decisions about the health of their own children," he said, referencing a case from Children's Hospital New Orleans exposed by the Washington Examiner where doctors "laughed in the face of a young girl's parents when they attempted to intervene as doctors sought to transition their daughter without their consent."
Democrats on the subcommittee condemned the hearing topic itself, with Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) calling it an "all-time low for the Republican majority."
Subcommittee ranking member Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) said, "Congress has no business interfering in parents' freedom to make decisions about appropriate medical care for their children. The idea that politicians are more qualified to judge the medical value or necessity of 'gender-affirming care' than every major medical organization is absurd."
She argued transitions have "changed children's lives for the better, and in many cases even save those lives."
Scanlon referenced the American medical establishment's endorsement of the medical interventions, calling them "safe and effective" — a point that is "just not up for debate." She said the purpose of the hearing was truly to "mobilize conservative voters through fear" and promote "right-wing talking points."
Nineteen-year-old detransitioner Chloe Cole, who is celebrating her birthday testifying before the subcommittee, detailed the path of coercion she received from doctors that ultimately led her to start a transition process at the age of 12.
She called herself a "victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America" that sends families "on a path of ideologically motivated deceit and coercion."
Doctors used the common messaging tactic on her parents, saying, "Would you rather have a dead daughter or [a] living transgender son?"
That fear "was enough for my parents to let their guard down," Cole said. She was put on puberty blockers, and then quickly switched to testosterone.
"My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer, my bone structure permanently masculinized, my Adam's apple more prominent, my fertility unknown," Cole told the House subcommittee. "I look in the mirror sometimes and I feel like a monster."
"I had a double mastectomy at 15," she continued. "After my breasts were taken away from me, the tissue was incinerated. Before I was able to legally drive, I had a huge part of my future womanhood taken from me. I will never be able to breastfeed."
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She said that while she was not suicidal before the transition like the doctors had threatened, she did become suicidal after the surgery.
"Puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated," she concluded. "Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience. Please let me be your final warning."