It is reprehensible to tell children their bodies are wrong and should be rejected, and to convince them, not only to hate their bodies, but to actually consent to let doctors cut off healthy body parts and disrupt endocrine systems in a vain effort to achieve greater happiness and peace of mind.

What makes these horrific actions even more disturbing is the pretense that this is being done out of love and care. When the perpetrators are allowed to convince others that anyone who tries to protect these children is the enemy, we know the world has turned upside down. In the upside-down world, friends and neighbors fight to allow the perpetrators of these atrocities to continue their crimes unimpeded, while silencing anyone who objects. Those who caution medical providers against immediately halting puberty, introducing cross-sex hormones or cutting off healthy body parts are seen as “transphobes.” Suggesting that teens who feel uncomfortable in their bodies might benefit from therapy to align their minds with their bodies is endorsing “conversion therapy.” Concern about sterility, sexual dysfunction, incontinence, infection, bone density problems, increased risk of stroke or heart attack, cancer, liver or kidney failure is somehow hateful. In upside down world, wrong is right, bad is good, and harm is care.

The best way to stop this psychological and bodily harm to our children is to let the world know what is really happening. We have to make it clear that the medical interventions involved in “gender affirming care” are not “lifesaving” and will, in varying degrees, make everyone who receives such interventions less healthy. We have to make it clear that the path to finding one’s authentic self is not forged through drastic cosmetic alterations in the form of toxic chemicals and invasive surgeries. any more than it is forged through rejection of one’s body and denial of biological reality.