The June 18th Supreme Court ruling upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender mutilation of minors–United States v. Skrmetti–is generating criticism from the Left. But there is room for concerns from those who welcome the ruling.
In 2023, Tennessee banned procedures on minors, in the name of treating “gender dysphoria,” that rendered those young people temporarily or permanently sterile. The prohibitions included puberty blockers and surgery to alter genitalia and/or remove healthy female breasts. Gender ideologues immediately pounced on the Volunteer State and enjoyed the backing of the Biden Administration.
With the change of administrations, the Trump team took Tennessee’s position that the ban was constitutional. The Supreme Court, 6-3, agreed.
The ruling ultimately concluded that temporary or permanent medical interventions affecting a minor’s future fertility, done in the name of “gender healthcare”, are controversial and disputed issues about which there is substantial disagreement. In such a context, the Court chose to leave the question of how to address them “to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.”
The immediate outcome of the case is that approximately 30 states will protect minors from temporary and/or permanent loss of fertility in the guise of “gender care.” But it also means that about 20 states will not.
Invocations of “states’ rights” and “states as laboratories of democracy” have appeal in some quarters, but we should soberly consider what they imply. They suggest that lopping off a teenage girl’s healthy breasts, reconfiguring genitalia so they become merely a simulacrum of “genitalia” (i.e., unable to generate anything), and/or chemically castrating children just might be “good” things, depending on whether you live in, say, Michigan versus Ohio.
Laurie Pohutsky, the Michigan state legislator who took to social media last January to tell the world she was getting sterilized in response to the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, announced that Michigan would continue proudly to stand with teenagers seeking mastectomies of healthy breasts.
While I doubt that Gretchen Whitmer will ramp up tourism by changing signs at the Ohio border to “Welcome to Michigan–the Great Lake States–Mastectomies for Minors Always Protected!” we should keep our eyes on something else: these 20-something states proclaiming themselves “sanctuaries” for “gender-affirming care.”
We already saw that tactic with abortion. California, Illinois, Michigan, and–if Abigail Spanberger gets her way and is elected—Virginia, all regard themselves as “choice oases” amidst an America of handmaidens and Gilead states. Given the thrall with which Democrats find themselves to sexual libertinism masquerading as “choice,” expect something similar with “gender care.”
And it’s not mere rhetoric. Would “sanctuary states” only allow confused children and their more confused parents to mutilate themselves? Or would they go further, encouraging runaway children and declaring them temporarily emancipated for “gender care” purposes? Will they replicate the “non-extradition/non-cooperation” laws now being passed for abortionists that essentially immunize them against criminal or civil liability (e.g., malpractice) in the minor’s home state? Will such jurisdictions further split families by applying that immunity against, say, a father seeking redress for what a physician did to his child spirited to the “sanctuary state” by his or her mother? Will “non-affirming” parents find their parental rights temporarily or permanently cancelled by aggressively pro-trans “Child Protective Services?” Will such permissive states erect the kind of “judicial bypass” procedures that were used under Roe to subvert parental consent to a minor’s request for abortion? Will “the right to privacy” be invoked so that parents might not even know essential details of the “treatment?”
These are real questions involving parental rights. June 2025 marked the centennial of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a 1925 ruling in which a unanimous Supreme Court gave full-throated affirmation to parents to direct “the education and upbringing of children.” It’s the basis behind Doe v. Uthmeier, a case working through the Florida courts, which challenges the constitutionality of judicial bypass procedures by which “mature” minors could obtain abortions. With Roe dead, there is no countervailing “right” to justify a state official (judge) interfering with the right of parents to raise their minor child without providing her with an abortion.
Getting rid of the bypass system will erase the aberration that, when it comes to medical care, the state needs parental consent to give a girl an aspirin but not an abortion. If Uthmeier prevails, then states that use “sanctuary” policies to subvert parental rights regarding “gender care” will legitimately be in the crosshairs of violating the real federal rights of parents to be parents.
Gender ideologues will push back, saying that Tennessee violated “parental rights” by deciding it, and not parents, would say whether a child might have access, say, to puberty blockers. Isn’t that a contradiction?
No. Part of what underlay the challenge against Tennessee was the idea that states should not be able to regulate standards of care in their jurisdictions, particularly in procedures involving the reproductive system. No one would deny that a state could prohibit amputations of what it judges healthy limbs just because a parent and child think them unhealthy and found some “doctor” to sign off. Parents cannot, for example, bind their daughter’s feet, even if they and their child want it, think it “culturally appropriate,” and can find a practitioner. They cannot engage in female genital mutilation for religious reasons (a still common practice in many Muslim countries). Would an anorexic child be allowed to continue that way because her parents might have anorexic biases, too? Indeed, there is ample precedent that states can protect life even against a parent’s and child’s objections, such as when a transfusion is required to save a child’s life, but the parents’ religious tenets forbid it.
“Parental rights” are extensive, but they are not “whatever a parent says they are,” especially when the consequences are permanent and irreversible. In “gender surgery,” that’s obvious. But as Ryan Anderson noted in When Harry Became Sally, we are at best ignorant of the consequences of “puberty blockers.” Advocates say they are reversible; that’s unproven. We do not know the long-term consequences of puberty onset at, say, 21 as opposed to 12; the only way to know is by experimenting on people, something considered unethical not too long ago.
But when “parents’ rights” are reduced to “whatever a parent says,” medicine (and reality) both become consumer-oriented wish fulfillment: I want it, it’s OK. Expect to hear something of that confusion when the Supreme Court rules this month in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Maryland case where a local school district abridges parental opt-out for K-5 graders from its pro-gender ideology curriculum. The likely refrain will be: “parents’ rights count for parental transphobes, but not parents standing with ‘trans’ kids.”
That said, Tennessee’s law will not stop gender dysphoric kids and their approvingly confused parents from going, say, to Boston or New York for hormones, puberty blockers, and perhaps even “top” or “bottom surgery.” In that sense, the Supreme Court ruling made the protection of children “supported” by both parents from genital mutilation geography dependent. But that geographical diversity opens the door for much mischief, making where both parents are not in agreement, maybe even when both are in disagreement with their child. That’s where future controversies could arise.
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The Court seems to be embracing states rights. This goes with abortion and other issues. This will result in very different laws in different states. Not a good recipe for national unity, but here we are.
I recently read an article by a man who lives in Vermont, who only half jokingly advocates New England seceding from the Union. This way, he says, New England would not be troubled by obnoxious rednecks from Texas and Alabama.
Secession? We’ve been there before, albeit in the 1850’s.
Didn’t New England want to break away much earlier? Maybe in the 18th century ?
Our Founding Fathers unanimously stated that Nature’s God with the capital G, Is The Author and Endowed us with our inherent unalienable Right to Life, to Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness, and thus we can know through both Faith and reason, the purpose of our inherent unalienable Rights are what God, not man, intended .
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
Christmas greetings to the members of the Roman Curia (21 December 2012) | BENEDICT XVI
“The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
If you are not convinced by now that the defense of the family is under attack by those who are being permitted to subsist within The One Body of Christ, due to the failure to use the Charitable Anathema, which was instituted by Christ Himself for our Salvation, when He Stated, “You cannot be My Disciples if you do not Abide in My Word”, then I am afraid you would not recognize The Truth even if He Stood in front of you. This cannot persist.
“Penance, Penance, Penance.”
Prayers that those whose competence it is will Charitably Anathema the counterfeit church that is attempting to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, while denying The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, as they attempt to eclipse The True Church Of Christ.
“A man’s got know his limitations.”
Dirty Harry 1971
Finally, we can know through both Faith and reason that respect for the inherent Dignity of every beloved son or daughter from the moment of conception to natural death, which includes this issue, is not a State’s Rights issue , it is a Human’s Right Issue, so the fact that some States would deny the well being and healthy development of children , both physically and mentally, think it would not be detrimental, and in fact , harmful, to give children hormones that are contrary to a child’s biological essence, and in some cases, even agree to mutilate a child’s body, rather than attempt first and foremost, to restore the proper balance of hormones, that are consistent with their biological essence, while addressing any emotional and developmental issues that may exist and be contributing to their suffering? Mutilating one’s body causes wounding and further suffering, it does not heal wounds.
Where are the studies that show the affect of treating gender/body dysphoria with hormones that correspond with one’s biological essence, and why the rush to treat body dysphoria with hormones that serve to exaggerate this imbalance rather than attempt to correct it?
Pray for a treatment for those suffering with Body/Gender Dysphoria.🙏✝️💕🌹
Problem is the Court was not going to impose a nationwide ban on genital mutilation, if only because that’s not its job. Theirs was deciding whether TN could ban the procedure, and they said yes.
“Problem is the Court was not going to impose a nationwide ban on genital mutilation, if only because that’s not its job. Theirs was deciding whether TN could ban the procedure, and they said yes.”
On what basis can any Court , Federal or State, claim that genital mutilation should be protected by Law as well as providing hormones to any person that is an antagonist to what is natural and healthy for that particular person?
You’re right. No court has a right to validate by delegation an intrinsic social evil, even if it might trigger social upheaval.
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Dirty Harry 1971
About the U.S. Supreme Court’s splitting of the nations’ states 30-20 on the transgender agenda, why are we reminded of what Mark Twain’s runaway slave Jim had to say about Solomon who did NOT split the baby claimed by two women?
“De’ spute warn’t ’bout a half a chile, de ’spute was ’bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a ’spute bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan’ know enough to come in out’n de rain” (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884).
The recent ruling was split 4-4. Which also reminds us of the 2015 ruling in favor of the oxymoron “gay marriage”….
The vote was 5-4 in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), with Justice Kennedy writing the majority opinion. Yours truly distinctly recalls that in the run-up to that ruling, one of the justices was advised to recuse himself because of a past history of bisexuality. Had that self-evident reasoning behind the request been respected, the ruling would have been a null 4-4 outcome. But, in the run-up to the ruling the preemptive counterclaim was also made that all heterosexual justices, too, should recuse themselves! Equality! (Can’t find any memory of this stuff in the DEI-monitored internet content.)
The disrespecting culture of Tweedledee and Tweedledum is alive and well in respectable judicial robes. The justices “doan’ know enough to come in out’n de rei[g]n.”
I subscribe to a substack awkwardly entitled Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans. On it, parents post heart-wrenching stories about losing their children to trans ideology. However, it’s distressing to see how many of the parents who post are eager to make it clear that they do not oppose homosexuality and, indeed, supported or were willing to support their children’s homosexuality. It’s popular now to criticize trans ideology as homophobic: it’s causing us to lose a generation of people who would otherwise be happy, healthy homosexuals. So while, for these parents, lobbing off or mutilating healthy body parts or deforming children with cross-sex hormones is carrying things “too far,” this is a train they bought tickets for and boarded willingly. This certainly shows the limitations of decisions and laws based on the narrative of “rights.” Sadly, there is no philosopher king waiting in the wings to wake us up from this Hobbesian-Lockean nightmare…except Christ.
What are the suicide rates pre and post mutilation ?
We are a nation of barbarians. First, we allow the murder of unborn children with some states allowing, or proposing to allow, the murder of the elderly through assisted suicide. Now we have states with legalized child mutilation under the title of transgenderism. WE also have three Supreme Court justices that are barbarians.
SCOTUS needs to rule that there is no such thing as transgenderism.
No scientist, politician, judge or doctor can remove the
“y” chromosomes from a male and transform him into a legitimate female, nor can anyone take those same “Y” chromosomes and inject them into a female to transform that person into a male.
Anything and everything beyond that is mere pretense and make-believe.
There exists no clause anywhere in the constitution that allows or provides for an adjudicated or legislated forced pretense on the American people.