We don’t let them get tattoos, pet untrustworthy looking dogs, or allow them to play where they could easily drown, fall from a great height, or get otherwise horrifically injured.

Kids are stupid. There’s no way around it. Even that 16 or 17-year-old grade-A student you brag about is one house party away from a drunk driving accident or a teen pregnancy. They continuously make decisions that are harmful to themselves and it’s up to adults to make sure they stay on the right track. It’s literally our job as parents to protect them until they can garner the minimum amount of wisdom and common sense to avoid doing something that could complicate their lives forever.

So given that we do all of this to protect kids and we find that many of these things are perfectly common sense, why is it that we as a society are perfectly fine with small children permanently being damaged through transgender surgeries and hormone treatments?

If they said they wanted an Encanto-inspired tattoo we’d tell them no immediately, yet if a young boy of four says he feels like being a girl, we’re okay with injecting the child with body-altering chemicals? It makes no sense.

This is why Texas Governor Greg Abbott began cracking down on anyone or any place that loads up kids with hormones and has encouraged that those who do this to children be reported as it amounts to nothing short of child abuse.

From the Boston Globe:

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott this week directed state agencies to conduct “prompt and thorough” investigations into the use of gender-affirming care for transgender children, a move that follows an opinion from the state attorney general that such treatments are a form of “child abuse.”

In a Tuesday letter to the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, Abbott cited an opinion issued Friday by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stating that certain gender-affirming treatments for transgender children — including gender reassignment surgery and puberty-blocking medications — “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions” of state law.

Abbott wrote that the protective services agency “is responsible for protecting children from abuse,” adding in a tweet Tuesday that the agency will “refer for prosecution any such abuse.”

I’ve always been about individual liberty. An adult who takes hormone blockers and gets reassignment surgery is something that I feel is up to the adult and I’ll have no say over it. It’s none of my business nor do I want it to be.

Children are a different story. Once they learn how to communicate they go through phases. A young boy may imitate his mother by walking around in high heels or wanting to put on makeup because he watched her do it. A young girl may want to dress more like her dad. Oftentimes these are just imitative moves made out of admiration for the parent. It doesn’t constitute gender dysphoria.

Yet our society has been so enveloped by this idea that transgenderism is common and safe that parents either enthusiastically throw their children into danger through medical procedures or they’re being pressured into it from outside sources. Reports of children being influenced to embrace gender fluidity are surfacing all the time, and a parent attempting to undo the brainwashing becomes an excuse for these outside forces to attempt legal action against the parent.

Abbott’s move is to not only stop this kind of abuse by taking advantage of a child’s mind and irreversibly damaging their bodies, but he’s also putting up a tall fence in front of a slippery slope.

Whether or not you’re a transgender person or an “ally” this shouldn’t be upsetting you. This is literally protecting children from something that may very well be just a phase that they’ll move on from in a matter of days, weeks, or even years. Children are incredibly changeable, and the people who don’t recognize this and still push forward with life-altering surgeries aren’t actually concerned about the children. They’re concerned about an agenda.