The Left’s Ironic Defense of the “Rights” of Minors

It’s time to once again address the “marginalization” of our youth. In some states, teens under 18 aren’t allowed to terminate their pregnancies without permission from Mom and Dad. They can’t enjoy a good gender transition in peace. They can’t even vote. Minors are people too, you know, and they should enjoy all the same rights as adults – well, almost.

When teens want to voice conservative viewpoints or – gasp – own firearms, they’re just kids who can’t be trusted to make responsible, adult choices. And don’t anyone mention that dreaded word responsibility. Sometimes it seems that if leftists didn’t have double standards, they would have none at all.

Babies Killing Babies

In a recent policy analysis, the Guttmacher Institute claims that laws requiring minors to obtain parental consent before having an abortion are harmful to young people. Such restrictions “are a dangerous erosion of reproductive rights and purposefully target population who may be least equipped to fight back,” according to the report.

That the Guttmacher Institute’s agenda includes unrestricted abortion even for minors should come as no surprise. The man for whom it is named, Alan Frank Guttmacher, served as president of Planned Parenthood, vice president of the American Eugenics Society, and signed the Humanist Manifesto II of 1973, which called for, amongst other things, an international court, the right to unrestricted abortion, and an absolute rejection of theism and deism.

There was a time when parents were advised to have “the talk” with their kids – ideally before said children decide to figure it out for themselves. The goal, of course, was to prevent what was often called “babies having babies.”

Now that message has changed. Preventing babies from having babies has become allowing babies to kill babies – and parents have no right to go poking their noses in their kids’ business.

Gender transition

Much like the laws requiring parental involvement for abortions, prohibiting the medical transitioning of transgender minors has morphed from good sense to “codifying hate and fear.” Linda Blackford of the Lexington Herald-Leader accused Kentucky lawmakers of “targeting transgender kids.”

The article began with the sad story of a poor transgender kid who felt suicidal thoughts due to depression caused by gender dysphoria, which Blackford helpfully defined as “the certainty that he was in the wrong body.” He’s doing better now because – you guessed it – his mother allowed him to undergo hormone treatment that allows his “exterior to match the person inside.”

But then came the evil Republicans and their “Slate of Hate,” a collection of bills “against” gay and transgender kids, including a bill to “punish” transgender athletes. If these bigots have their way, kids won’t be able to seek medical intervention to alter their sex until age 18. They’ll have to use what homophobes and transphobes call the “appropriate” bathroom. And of course, boys who consider themselves girls won’t be allowed to dominate female sports.

These increasingly common trends of transgender kids and underage abortions – and the pregnancies that “necessitate” them – are merely different symptoms of the same disease: Too many parents want to be their kids’ best friends.

Neuroscientists agree that the rational part of the brain – which is responsible for wise decision making – isn’t fully developed until at least the mid-20s, maybe even the early 30s. Most seem to settle on 25 as an average age of full mental maturity. What does this mean for transgender kids? Thanks to underdeveloped reasoning centers and the often-confusing mix of hormones swirling about the adolescent and teen endocrine systems, they simply aren’t ready to decide who or what they should be for the rest of their lives. So what can a poor, gender-disoriented kid do? That’s where actual parenting comes into play.

Transgender Sports Transcends Fairness

As for punishing transgender athletes, allowing males who identify as female to compete with their preferred competition actually punishes the natural-born girls. It doesn’t take any technical knowledge to see this, either. As Liberty Nation’s Kelli Ballard wrote:

“Without enumerating the biological differences between males and females, the trend of born-males winning titles in women’s sports should be proof enough that the odds are stacked in their favor when competing against natural-born females. The separation of sports by gender was done so that women could compete on a level playing field.”

That said, let’s be thorough and look at the science. Males get a massive spike of testosterone and, with it, increased size, strength, and speed. On average, men produce 570% more testosterone than women, leading to major differences between the sexes in muscle composition and bone mass. Then there’s all that estrogen women produce; it leads to more fat and less lean mass. A study by McMaster University found that mature females are, on average, only 52% as strong as males in the upper body and 66% as strong in the lower body. What about hormone therapy? There’s no undoing the “damage” done by testosterone. Male to female transitions are much more difficult than female to male. Here’s why: the body reacts to testosterone before estrogen or other hormones, and when both are present, testosterone will have the greater effect.

Fast Forward the Progress

If teens are grown up enough to make life altering decisions like what gender to be or whether to birth or abort a baby, then surely they’re mature enough to simply be adults. There’s already a movement to lower the voting age to 16. Should we ditch the incremental nature of this push and fast forward the so-called progress?

Thinking about dropping out of high school? Fill out your draft card! If 16 is the new age of majority, then you can get your abortions, change your gender, vote, purchase your guns, buy your smokes and booze, and even get married if you want – and Mom and Dad can butt out. But don’t forget to move out, get off their insurance, register for the draft, be charged as an adult for any crimes you might commit, and, in general, start taking care of yourself. Heck, why stop there? Let’s just call puberty the end of childhood. All the rights and the responsibilities and liabilities of adulthood. Good luck, kids. You’re going to need it.

Or perhaps we actual adults need to stop worrying about giving kids their space and their freedom and focus instead on preparing them to survive – nay, thrive – in the grown-up world. Their time will come all too soon as it is.

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Read more from James Fite.