ALLEIGH MARRE: It Shouldn’t Be Controversial To Prioritize The Safety Of Children

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a new report that confirms what most parents have known in their core all along: social and medical gender interventions on children carry severe, irreversible risks and almost no benefits.

The HHS report thoroughly analyzes the gender interventions recommended for children in the name of “gender affirming care” and the accompanying risks associated with this “care.” The report notes that social transition (to include name, pronoun, or identity changes) is “an initial step toward medical transition,” such as “puberty suppressing drugs to prevent the onset of puberty; cross-sex hormones to spur the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex; and surgeries including mastectomy and vaginoplasty,” – procedures thousands of children have already received. It also lays out the devastating consequences of these interventions, which include “infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret.”

Prioritizing the safety of children should not be controversial. Prohibiting irreversible sex-change procedures on children should not be political. Unfortunately, however, our culture has made that nearly impossible. Many venues from youth sports leagues to bathrooms at public parks have all normalized or even promoted and celebrated gender confusion. Perhaps the most insidious place we’ve seen gender dysphoria celebrated is in schools.

Across the country administrators, counselors, and school boards have allowed schools to promote gender ideology and weave its teachings into the fabric of every subject, even math class. The very people trusted with educating and caring for children in the absence of parents are instead telling them they can change their gender and encouraging life-altering decisions, often without so much as even the courtesy of a notification to parents.

In the most extreme cases, schools have helped minors access puberty blockers or hormones. The more common entry point, however, is social transition – a teacher or counselor quietly working with a student to change their names, pronouns, and identities – without informing parents. Some activists frame social transition for children as harmless or compassionate. That is a dangerous lie. Once a child is set on the path of social transition, the odds of moving toward medicalization rise dramatically. Behind the new name and pronouns lies a path leading towards cross-sex hormones, surgeries, and a lifetime of medical dependence.

That is why American Parents Coalition (APC) filed an amicus brief in the Eleventh Circuit supporting the Littlejohn family, whose middle school socially transitioned their 13-year-old daughter without parental consent.

Our brief argues that social transition is not a harmless accommodation but the first step on a path toward medical intervention. Under the Constitution, parents – not schools, not counselors, not the state – have the right to decide whether their child should be set on that path.

This case matters because it exposes a broader trend. Across the country, school districts and local governments are adopting policies that treat parents as obstacles to a larger goal. They claim the right to manage a child’s gender identity independently, even when it means concealing life-changing decisions from families.

When schools take the first step of socially transitioning a child, they hand that child over to an industry eager to capitalize on confusion and vulnerability. Every parent should see this for what it is: a deliberate bypassing of the family, a breach of trust, and a violation of basic rights.

This all comes at a time when more and more children and teens across the United States are being diagnosed as gender dysphoric or identifying as transgender. A 2022 Reuters investigation reports that in 2021 approximately 42,000 children and teens received that diagnosis, nearly triple the number from 2017. A 2024 CDC report said that in 2023, 3% of the 15.6 million High School students in the United States identified as transgender, a whopping 468,000 kids. Another 2% or 312,000 were said to be “questioning” their gender.  Unsurprisingly, in the short period of time that gender ideology has become ubiquitously celebrated in society, the numbers have skyrocketed.

State governments are also laying the legal groundwork to strip parental rights away and protect those teaching gender ideology to children. Across the country, legislatures are passing laws designed to shield doctors, clinics, and even school personnel from consequences for pushing gender treatments on kids. These laws also expand legal protections for so-called “gender-affirming care,” making it harder for parents to challenge or stop interventions once they begin. Some states have gone so far as to classify any challenge to these procedures as discrimination, threatening legal penalties against parents, medical professionals, or even insurers who question the prevailing orthodoxy.

In short, some states are creating a legal framework that bypasses parental rights and insulates schools and doctors from scrutiny to entrench gender ideology in the public system, making it extraordinarily difficult for families to push back.

We simply cannot allow that to happen. Schools are not parents. Governments are not moral authorities. No institution has the right to reshape a child’s life. We now look to the courts to enforce that line.

Alleigh Marré is Executive Director of American Parents Coalition and mother of four. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.