When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive in February instructing the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate the mutilation of children as child abuse, it elicited a firestorm of criticism from the hard left. Adherents of so-called progressive ideology have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve brutal–and invasive–medical and surgical treatments for children under the guise of promoting “gender-affirming care,” which means they are trying, and failing, to help these kids transition to the opposite sex.
Now, DFPS workers are resigning in protest of the measure because they really, really, really want children to take puberty blockers and cut up their bodies, because they believe it will magically transform them into the opposite sex. And yes, this is happening in the red state of Texas. In fact, they are even trying to persuade a court to place a block on Abbott’s order.
Texas Scorecard reported:
Sixteen current and former DFPS employees petitioned the court to pause child abuse investigations against parents or medical professionals allowing children to receive disfiguring “transgender” treatments until a final decision is made on the directive’s legality.
The employees also refuted the order’s classification of these treatments as child abuse, instead comparing the administration of puberty-blocking drugs and sterilizing cross-sex hormones to “chemotherapy and pain management drugs for cancer patients” and criticized the directive for “radically” disrupting the agency’s status quo.
That’s right, folks. These people believe the court is braindead enough to believe that prescribing puberty blockers, which have been shown to have long-term irreversible effects, is the same as treating someone for a deadly disease like cancer.
The filing indicated that the governor’s action was the “last straw” for many workers and say that over 2,000 of the agency’s 12,000 employees have stepped down from their position because they want kids taking these drugs and undergoing these gruesome surgeries.
The governor issued the directive in February after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released a lengthy legal opinion classifying supposed “gender-affirming care” as child abuse and urging DFPS to “act accordingly.”
Abbott’s order received pushback from Democratic officials in Dallas County, Bexar County, and Travis County, who vowed to refrain from prosecuting child abuse cases against adults facilitating medical and surgical “transition” treatments. But despite the effort to defend the mutilation of children, DFPS has investigated 11 cases in which minors have undergone these types of procedures.
The investigations started back up after the state Supreme Court in May struck down an injunction barring the state from carrying them out. DFPS contacted lawyers representing some of the parents who subjected their children to these treatments, to let them know the probes would continue.
However, it is also worth noting that the Supreme Court’s ruling indicated that while Abbott and Paxton were “within their rights to state their legal and policy views on this topic … DFPS was not compelled by law to follow them.”
“DFPS’s press statement, however, suggests that DFPS may have considered itself bound by either the Governor’s letter, the Attorney General’s Opinion, or both. Again, nothing before this Court supports the notion that DFPS is so bound,” according to the ruling.
For now, it appears the agency is complying with Abbott and Paxton’s request. But the only way to make this legally binding is for the state legislature to pass laws requiring the agency to investigate these cases as child abuse. With the upcoming legislative session next year, this will undoubtedly be a hot-button issue.
