California Family Council, or CFC, has been vocal in its opposition to surgeries and other procedures on minors intended to make them more like the opposite sex.
Twenty-seven states, mostly red ones, have bans or at least restrictions on these procedures. California does not. They have been dubbed "gender-affirming care," although critics call it gender mutilation.
Greg Burt, President of CFC, said in an interview with AFN his team is excited that Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest non-profit healthcare organizations in the U.S., announced it has paused its "gender-affirming" surgeries on minors.
Headquartered in Oakland, California, Kaiser operates in eight states and Washington, D.C.
"Now, these surgeries are really giving double mastectomies to young teenage girls who are distressed about their bodies, think they're the opposite sex. And Kaiser Permanente is just one of several organizations that have stopped these surgeries."
Stanford Medical Center and the Los Angeles Children's Hospital are two others that Burt mentioned has halted these surgeries on minors.
“So we're very excited about that. We've been trying to expose how awful it is that you're treating a mental health issue by permanently maiming and mutilating healthy body parts on young, vulnerable teens, but the problem is we can't get the press to really report on what's happening."
He said that's a problem they've had as recently as this past weekend when Kaiser made the announcement.
“We couldn't get the press to actually explain what these surgeries are. I was interviewed. Throughout the interview, they simply gave the perspective from the pro-trans side, saying these are lifesaving surgeries, gender-affirming that these people need, need to survive, and the Trump administration is discriminating and pulling these back…"
Burt said he looked at over 18 stories, and only one interviewed someone who had gone through such a transition.
"We call them de-transitioners. Only one story highlighted an interview from someone who had had their breasts removed as a teenager. Lila Jane, she had her breasts removed at age 13, and they interviewed her outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility, the very one that removed her breasts.”
“Most of the reporters we're finding don't want to interview de-transitioners. And so really, this is a cover-up. They are not doing real journalism where you don’t let the different sides of an issue be represented.”
From journalism to activism
Instead, such journalists are doing something else.
“They're protecting the medical industry who has harmed multiple, numerous, hundreds and hundreds of kids who've had their bodies mutilated, and sadly, the press is hiding that."
Burt hopes groups like CFC calling attention to trans surgeries will help.
“Hopefully, it wakes some reporters up so that they start representing the truth, the reality of the biggest medical scandal that our country has seen in decades."
