PLs that protect children are identified as transphobic by NGOs

Dozens of bills are pending in the Chamber of Deputies that try to protect children from initiatives related to sex change. This movement has bothered LGBT groups, who consider transphobic proposals. The NGO Minha Criança Trans, for example, released a list of the projects that were presented this year and classified them as “a political maneuver to attack and promote hate speech against trans children and their families”.

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One of the bills criticized by the movements is PL 192/23, authored by deputy Kim Kataguiri (União-SP), which “criminalizes conduct by people who instigate, encourage, influence or allow children or adolescents to change their biological gender, as well as helping those who practice it”. The proposal was sent to the Human Rights Commission and provides for a prison sentence of 2 to 4 years for those who encourage or allow sex change in children and adolescents.

In justifying the project, Kataguiri mentions that “the Federal Constitution and various international treaties mandate that children and adolescents be guaranteed the maximum possible protection”. “It does not seem that the duty of maximum protection is consistent with carrying out the radical and often irreversible procedure of sex change. Children and adolescents do not have the capacity to make choices with such permanent impacts, nor do they have a full understanding of human sexuality”, explained the deputy.

Kataguiri also reinforced that “our legal system does not even allow children and adolescents to have civil capacity to be part of a legal transaction, let alone to make a decision that involves sensitive issues of bioethics and with permanent impacts”.

Bill bans sex reassignment surgery for anyone under 21

Another project that has been criticized by the LGBT movements is PL 204/23, which prohibits sex reassignment surgeries for minors under 21 and hormone therapies for minors under 18. Today, the subject is regulated by a rule of the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) that prohibits surgical intervention of sexual reassignment before the age of 18. Cross-hormone therapy (taking hormones of the opposite sex and, in the case of boys, also interrupting testosterone) can be done from the age of 16, with the authorization of parents or guardians.

For deputy Messias Donato (Republicanos-ES), co-author of the proposal, “children are not toys and cannot be used as guinea pigs for ideological groups that do everything to sexualize them and destroy this very important stage that is childhood”.

Donato is also the author of PL 2210/2023, which prohibits any preparation for gender transition in children and adolescents through treatments, therapies or procedures. The proposal inserts, in the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, the paragraph: “It is the duty of the family, those responsible, the community, society in general and the public power to guarantee the child and adolescent their healthy and harmonious development, prohibiting treatments , therapies, procedures or any other action that interferes with their gender formation.”

According to the parliamentarian, “minors are not able to understand and express their gender identity and some interventions can have negative effects on their development and well-being, compromising healthy and harmonious growth and not observing the rights guaranteed by the Constitution Federal”.

In addition to proposals related to gender reassignment, there are other projects that try to prohibit the use of neutral language in education systems and the teaching of gender ideology in schools.

Deputy Coronel Chrisóstomo (PL-RO) is one of the parliamentarians who presented a project against neutral language in schools. According to the deputy, “the use of ‘neutral language’ harms learning in schools and does not include anyone. This is because it hinders the understanding of people who have dyslexia, confuses the deaf who communicate through lip reading and hinders the blind who read through of software.”

Medical recommendations about children and sex change

International research and doctors warn about the current errors in the therapeutic approach of children who say they are trans and the irreparable consequences of sex reassignment procedures in children and adolescents.

Studies carried out with people in these age groups indicate that gender dysphoria remains in adulthood in only between 3% and 23% of cases and situations of young people who regret it are common. One of the best known is that of Keira Bell who, after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria at the age of 14, regretted the gender reversal treatments at the age of 16 and obtained a favorable decision in the UK Court so that those responsible for her early process gender transition workers to pay for the necessary health care.

In the Practical Update Guide on gender dysphoria, published in 2017, the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP) presented the risks associated with hormone treatment, such as weight gain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension and even breast cancer. The society reinforced that the pediatrician cannot prescribe such drugs, only endocrinologists.

Still on puberty control, the guide determines that the use of medication can only be started in adolescents, after “permanent psychological support, understanding of the physical changes and risks of therapy and signing of the term of consent and informed assent by parents and /or by the teenager”.