Obama and the Left Coast force taxpayers to underwrite transgender ‘transition’ costs

April 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – California, Oregon, and the Obama administration are increasingly forcing taxpayers to pay the price for transgender people to transition from one sex to another – even underwriting drugs that would stop the natural course of puberty.

Oregon is the first state in the nation to fund "puberty suppression" shots through Medicaid. The shots prevent puberty from naturally developing various physical characteristics of either sex, thus allowing a child to decide if he or she wants to develop normally at a later date – or attempt to change his or her gender.

The drug used to suppress puberty, Lupron, costs $7,500 per injection. It has been often used on children who start puberty early, and to treat prostate cancer and fibroid tumors.

In addition to its hefty price tag, drug also carries side effects for children. Dr. Megan Bird of the Legacy Medical Group in Portland, Oregon, told NPR that "the biggest risk that we talk about is bone deposition."

Additionally, "kids who first start Lupron get headaches and hot flushes sometimes, but those are usually only for a few weeks, and then they go away," she said. "Other issues is that they're out of synch with their peers.”

Sterility is also a risk, though Bird told NPR that allowing a child to temporarily begin puberty is possible – which would allow the harvesting of sperm and eggs for use at a later time.

Meanwhile in California, a judge has ruled that a transgender surgery that could cost as much as $100,000 must be given to a 51-year-old male prisoner who wishes to become female.

California and eight other states require private insurers to cover transgender-related medical care, and the state's Medicaid system also pays for transgender treatments.

The San Francisco judge who made the decision said that not providing transgender treatments violated the Eighth Amendment rights of the prisoner. RT.com reports that if the operation is successfully done, it would be the second such operation in U.S. prisons.

The Eighth Amendment was also cited in a recent decision by the Obama administration's Department of Justice, which told prison systems that total prohibitions on hormone treatments for transgender inmates is unconstitutional.

According to the New York Times, a 36-year-old prisoner held at the men's facility in the Georgia State Prison sued the state of Georgia in February for not continuing hormone treatment so he could present himself as a female.

His lawyers say that their client "has lost breast tissue and [his] female secondary sex characteristics have diminished."

“Prison officials have the obligation to assess and treat gender dysphoria just as they would any other medical or mental health condition,” said Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor. “Freeze-frame policies can have serious consequences to the health and well-being of transgender prisoners, who are among the most vulnerable populations incarcerated in our nation’s prisons and jails.”

So-called “freeze-frame policies” allow prisoners to receive treatments they are on when entered into prisons, but not afterward. Because the Georgia prisoner -- identified by the Times as Ashley Diamond -- was not listed as "transgender" when he entered prison, treatment was discontinued.

According to court documents, the Department of Justice says that the Georgia prison system, which has not yet commented on the decision by the federal agency, is violating Diamond's Eighth Amendment rights for the prevention of cruel and unusual punishment.

Federal taxpayers are currently on the hook for transgender treatment for Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking 700,000 military documents while serving in the Army, as well as transgender treatments for senior citizens under Medicare.

Thank you for referencing that article wagglebee. Please note that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

”The Eighth Amendment was also cited in a recent decision by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, which told prison systems that total prohibitions on hormone treatments for transgender inmates is unconstitutional.”

FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

Regarding constitutionally nonexistent rights, please consider the following. It is important to note that historical materials relating to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, the Supreme Court’s decision in Barron v. Baltimore, and also the clarification of the 14th Amendment by John Bingham, Bingham the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment (14A), all indicate that the rights expressly protected by the Bill of Rights originally did not apply to the states.

So even if it could be honestly argued that the Founding States would approve of subjectively reading the so-called right of indoctrinated transvestites to force taxpayers to pay for their the mutilation of their genitals into the 8th Amendment, such a right would not have applied to the states before 14A was ratified.

In other words, the 14th Amendment is the only way that constitutional rights can be applied to the states, but that’s not the end of the story.

What the corrupt federal government is wrongly ignoring is that the 14th Amendment only applies those rights which the states have expressly amended to the Constitution to the states, not so-called rights which activist judges, justices and the corrupt Justice Department are wrongly using “magic glasses” to subjectively read such rights into various constitutional statutes like the 8th Amendment and 14A’s Equal Protections Clause, presumably to win votes from low-information voters by doing so.

For example, the Supreme Court has historically clarified that the 14th Amendment did not create any new rights. That amendment applies only those rights expressly amended by the states to the Constitution to the states.

“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.

But more importantly, note that the Court’s clarification of 14A reflects the clarification of that amendment in the congressional record by John Bingham, Bingham the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” —John Bingham, Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)

So since the states have never amended Constitution to expressly protect “rights” like abortion and forcing taxpayers to pay for transvestites to mutilate their genitals, neither activist judges or justices, nor the corrupt Justice Department have any constitutionally enumerated protections that they can throw at the states regarding these issues.

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