NPR’s big story on Monday’s Morning Edition was “Florida bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Parents raise concerns,” by Melissa Block. She’s a former morning anchor turned “NPR special correspondent covering gender issues.” Block’s completely one-sided seven-minute story included a portrait of teenager Liz Bostock, “[a]ssigned male at birth.”
With a soft, celebratory focus on activist mothers, happy “trans kids,” and virtually no dissenting voices aired or inconvenient facts raised, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the liberal media’s harmful attitude that children can be born in the wrong body, an error that needs irrevocable surgical and-or chemical fixing that can result in permanent sterilization.
NPR used the bizarre term “gender-affirming care” describe gender denial….five times in seven minutes. The teenager started receiving puberty blockers last August. “It’s been amazing,” said her mother.
MELISSA BLOCK: That’s Liz’s mom, Virginia Hamner, who says, with gender-affirming care, she’s seen her daughter light up.
VIRGINIA HAMNER: It’s fun and exciting for her to be able to be exactly who she wants to be.
BLOCK: But as for the future, well, that’s cloudy. Under Florida’s new rules that prohibit gender-affirming care for minors, new patients are banned entirely.
The opposition to puberty blockers for children is just barely mentioned and immediately contradicted by woke experts:
BLOCK: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has targeted LGBTQ rights and has made parental rights a running theme as he eyes a potential White House bid. The irony, says Virginia Hamner, is that her parental rights are being trampled.
HAMNER: It’s a gut punch. It’s so frustrating to hear the rhetoric of parental rights be used to say kids shouldn’t have access to treatment because we need to let them be kids when it’s like, you’re right. And guess what? That’s all I want for my kid.
BLOCK: Dozens of the country’s leading medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, endorse gender-affirming care as time-tested and medically necessary.
But Florida’s surgeon general, appointed by Governor DeSantis, calls it highly experimental, unproven and risky. A member of the state board of medicine said that by banning gender-affirming care, they were acting to protect children from irreversible harm. Pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Kristin Dayton strongly disputes those claims.
KRISTIN DAYTON: There is tons of evidence to back my assertion that this is safe and healthy for children.
MELISSA BLOCK: Dayton runs the Youth Gender Program at the University of Florida. And she worries about her patients, many of whom haven’t yet started on blockers or hormones and now won’t be able to.
Block did not acknowledge the “leading U.S. medical group” American Academy of Pediatrics has hurt children by pushing politicized mask mandates in schools to fight COVID, helping make the United States unique in requiring masks for toddlers. AAP even dishonestly deleted its own previous recommendations that growing children need to see faces. Yet NPR thinks AAP is acting in children’s best interests when they endorse the misnomer of “gender-affirming care.”
The very sympathetic NPR narrative-spinner also talked to “Sandi,” mother of a “trans son.” Their doctor explained he will not prescribe anything beyond her child’s current puberty blockers.
SANDI: One thing he has said several times is, I don’t want to go to jail.
MELISSA BLOCK: And to be clear, jail time is not a penalty under Florida’s new rules. But many fear sanctions could be toughened, a fear that’s shared by some families, which is why we agreed to use only Sandi’s first name.
NPR ignored how enlightened Europe is also restricting “gender-affirming care” for children and that clinics are shutting down, like in Florida. NPR also ignored sad stories of transitioned children:
These kids are risking sterility, sexual dysfunction, a range of complex medical issues from stroke to cancer, and increased mental instability for a treatment that has not been proven to work. Most frightfully, studies have shown that transition does not reduce the risk of suicide in this vulnerable population.
NPR is sponsored by, among other organizations, you, the taxpaying public.
“There are some days that you look at everything going on and you are just paralyzed by fear of what’s coming at your kid next.”
Parents, trans kids, & doctors talked w/me about Florida’s new ban on gender-affirming care. My latest for @NPR:https://t.co/JMhXvJcHVP
— melissa block (@NPRmelissablock) February 20, 2023