Last week, Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha, sent a letter to Sen. Ray Aguilar, chair of the Legislature’s Executive Board, asking State Senators to rethink the legality and constitutionality of LB574, otherwise known as the “Let Them Grow Act”. LB574 put restrictions on physicians administering gender altering drugs and procedures on individuals under the age of 19. LB574 narrowly passed in the Legislature, and Sen. Cavanaugh had filibustered every bill leading up to the final vote on LB574 in order to stall its passage.

Sen. Cavanaugh’s letter to the Executive Board is designed to press the issue of how many sexes actually exist and to force the State Legislature to grapple with the issue of legalizing gender rights. For example, she cited the Civil Rights Act of 1964, appealed to the Bill of Rights contained in the Nebraska State Constitution, especially Article I, Section 3 which protects any person from being deprived of their right to liberty, and the Declaration of Independence which guarantees to every citizen the right to pursue happiness.

One of the fundamental problems with Sen. Cavanaugh’s mission to protect gender rights is that it is based upon very recent and flimsy science. While it is not my intention today to argue for the science of a two sex only human anatomy, it is my intention to challenge Sen. Cavanaugh’s progressive scientific worldview. For example, earlier this summer, the American College of Pediatricians released a declaration which calls upon those in medical profession to “follow the science” and to “immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.” Their statement is important because it shows that there simply is no consensus in the medical field regarding these kinds of treatments for children.

Medical science sometimes advances faster than ethics. As Dr. Ian Malcom once said about the scientists who were creating dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park, they “…were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Dr. Malcom’s word of caution rings just as true for humans as it is for dinosaurs. Performing gender altering procedures on minors is just as much a moral decision as it is a scientific one.

In her letter to the Executive Board, Sen. Cavanaugh referred to these gender altering procedures as “necessary healthcare” without any qualification. To be sure, gender altering procedures are not necessary for sustaining life, and non-life-threatening healthcare procedures have never been considered a fundamental human right in American jurisprudence. At best, gender altering procedures would fall under the category of elective procedures, and elective procedures do not qualify as basic rights. If elective procedures were to constitute a necessary healthcare right, then what would that imply about such things as breast augmentations, liposuction, and nose jobs for underage straight individuals?

The fact of the matter is that many laws are created and are enforced which restrict what people can do to their own bodies. For example, the State of Nebraska has laws on the books which prohibit suicide, drunk driving, and public nudity, just to name a few. We prohibit such activities despite the fact that the argument is sometimes made on a purely personal level that suicide, drunk driving, and public nudity might contribute to an individual’s personal pursuit of happiness. We prohibit these kinds of activities because they can potentially do irreparable harm to the individual and that they transgress what is good for society as a whole.

So, I submit that making gender altering procedures available to minors is not good for Nebraska. Legalizing gender altering procedures for minors is immoral because minors are not yet mature enough to make these kinds of irreparable, life-changing decisions for themselves and that allowing minors to make these kinds of irreversible decisions transgresses what is good for society as a whole.