> Kids are too young to make life long decisions like this.
Exactly, and that's why I think it's inconceivable that they should be prohibited from getting help from therapists and psychiatrists, which bills like this one try to prohibit.
This is a serious decision in which children and their parents need support. Bills that seek to a) prevent children from accessing care based on peer-reviewed standards of care, b) send parents to jail for supporting their children, and c) revoke the licenses of health care professionals who follow internationally accepted, peer-reviewed guidelines should never see the light of day.
Just because something is accepted does not make it right. People had lobotomies routinely performed because it was an accepted practice by peer reviewed professionals.
Orphan Children need to have their rights protected precisely because they've been routinely abused by people that have power over them. That includes being free from being pressured into getting medical procedures done to them which they are not old enough to consent to.
> more than a few got adopted and abused, and something like 19 were killed by their adopted parents.
Completely useless propaganda in the absence of [1] a credible source and [2] a comparison to those adopted by Russians, or who remain in Russian orphanages. FWIW, if I were a Russian orphan, I'd take my chances being adopted by parents in the U.S. any day of the week over remaining in an orphanage.
Not to say that Russian orphanages are evil institutions. But I doubt you'll be any evidence that shows they are better environments than the average adoptive family in the U.S. I expect you'd find the opposite, if anything, given the difference between any institutional environment, and the concomitant opportunities for abuse and neglect on a large scale, and an adoptive nuclear family.
You're probably right on this. But the political will to send orphan children into a country that might mutilate their sex organs is probably zero in Russia at this point.
Perhaps that's the perception in Russia as a result of their domestic political propaganda (or, to be fair, misinformation spread by certain political interests in the U.S. itself which, I'm sure, is amplified in Russia). But there is no epidemic of child sex-organ mutilation in the United States. Assuming you're talking about treatment of trans youth, this is generally limited to puberty blockers in children, and that is not done until adolescence. (Potentially proceeding to cross-sex hormone therapy.)
Edit: This is obvious, but still worth mentioning: to say that the U.S. will "mutilate their sex organs" is obviously a tendentious framing, to say the least, on multiple levels. Ignoring the issues with the word "mutilate," it's also false the the U.S., as a country would be the one doing it. Rather, the U.S. would allow someone to receive gender affirming treatment if they wanted it. (Which, again, is also very unlikely to involve surgery in the case of a minor.)
