Taxpayers would foot bill for 'ghastly' surgery on children

If bureaucrats in Vermont successfully change the rules surrounding Medicaid, transgender children won't have to wait until they are 21 to undergo sex-reassignment surgeries at taxpayers' expense.

Children covered by Medicaid in Vermont could begin those surgeries at much earlier ages, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Vermont Health Access. The proposed rule, says the Burlington Free Press, eliminates an age minimum and allows youths under 18 to undergo what the state calls "gender affirmation surgery" with informed consent from a parent or guardian.

Cultural issues writer Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute says at least parental consent is needed under the proposal. "But we know that parents are being influenced by the professional mental health and medical community, not all of whom are onboard with this," she points out. "But their formal public statements endorse trans-affirming protocols."

Higgins predicts this dangerous movement, spurred on by LGBTQ activists, will begin to eventually decline.

"We are going to look back on this in 10 [or] 20 years the way we look back on lobotomies for mentally ill people, because this is ghastly what we're doing to children," she tells OneNewsNow.

In a related story, pediatrician Quentin Van Meter of Atlanta told Breitbart News that since gender ideology has been forced on the American people, "every single transgender patient who has come to me has come from a totally dysfunctional family."

According to Van Meter, putting children through sex-reassignment surgery is merely "painting over the [emotional] trauma" they have experienced at home.

The Vermont rule, which was proposed in late May, would allow taxpayer coverage – through Medicaid – of 16 different genital surgeries for minors suffering from the clinical definition of "gender dysphoria."