The accountability phase

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

For years, debates over transgender procedures on minors centered on legislatures, school boards, and questions of public policy.

BROWN: Now, a growing number of disputes are finding their way into courtrooms.

WORLD commentator Daniel Suhr says that shift may tell us something important about where the debate goes next.

DANIEL SUHR: Within days of one another, Texas and New Jersey offered two very different answers to the same question: Who should be held responsible when a child undergoes irreversible transgender procedures and later regrets it?

In Texas, state officials and the U.S. Department of Justice recently announced a $10 million settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital. The settlement holds the hospital accountable for its role in transgender procedures on minors.

Whistleblower Dr. Eitan Heim reacted:

HEIM: This is the first legal victory we've all been waiting for since the Trump administration came into office. You've had investigations, you've had indictments, but nothing has ever gone to the finish line. This is the first one. 

And the other important thing, too, is that the reason it's at the finish line is not because of powerful people or a lot of money. It's because of like a handful of people who refuse to give up, who are willing to work hard, be strategic, stick to their values, and you know, put their faith in God above all else.

Accountability. That may define the next phase of this debate.

In New Jersey, though, lawmakers are moving in the opposite direction. They are advancing legislation designed to shield hospitals and providers from lawsuits and other legal consequences related to so-called gender-affirming care.

Those two developments may signal where this issue is headed. 

For years, the debate focused on whether these procedures should be allowed at all. Now, a different question is emerging: What happens afterward?

And concerns about accountability are not limited to conservative states.

A New York jury recently awarded roughly $2 million to a plaintiff who argued that transgender procedures amounted to medical malpractice. Whatever one thinks of that verdict, it demonstrates that ordinary citizens serving on juries are beginning to wrestle with these cases.

That matters because the people bringing these lawsuits are not political abstractions. They are young men and women who say they underwent life-altering interventions as minors and now believe that they were harmed.

As more of those cases reach the courts, pressure will grow to determine who bears responsibility.

Parents certainly make medical decisions for their children. That is an important aspect of family authority and liberty. But the state also has a legitimate interest in protecting minors from harm. The U.S. Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that principle in its decision upholding Tennessee's restrictions on transgender procedures on children.

Bringing us back to accountability.

Much as critics of abortion often argued that responsibility should rest first with providers rather than with patients, critics of pediatric transgender procedures argue similarly: that doctors and medical institutions should answer for the procedures they promoted.

New Jersey's proposal points in a different direction. The bill would not simply permit these procedures. It would make it harder to hold providers legally responsible for them.

The central question is no longer merely whether transgender procedures for minors should continue. Increasingly, the question is whether the institutions that promoted those procedures have to answer for the harm they have caused.

Texas and New Jersey have offered very different answers. The rest of the country will likely have to answer soon as well.

For WORLD, I’m Daniel Suhr.

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