For some reason, it’s now a thing for progressives to push sex reassignment for children. While the general minimum age is 18 years of age, there have been moves to allow such procedures for supposed transgenders as early as 16.
Enter Texas, which intends to prosecute the performing of sex reassignment surgery for children, treating the same as “child abuse.” State governor Greg Abbott, citing an opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pointed out that it is “against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
The concern really is the possible damage done to those undergoing such surgeries: “The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people — extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered — documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers” (“Sex reassignment surgery doesn’t work. Here’s the evidence” by Ryan Anderson, The Heritage Foundation, March 2018).
John Hopkins University’s revered psychiatry professor Dr. Paul McHugh pointed out that “Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men” and, in fact, “sex change is physically impossible, it frequently does not provide the long-term wholeness and happiness that people seek.” (“Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme,” Dr. Paul McHugh, Public Discourse: The Journal of The Witherspoon Institute, June 10, 2015)
Governor Abbot relied on the Texas Family Code, particularly on its definition of “abuse.” There is, however, also the Stop Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2020, which criminalized “female genital mutilation” (or FGM), which is commonly referred to also as “female circumcision” or “female genital cutting,” usually for cultural or religious reasons. Then US President Donald Trump, who signed the law, also labeled FGM “a form of child abuse, gender discrimination, and violence.”
In the Philippines, a 2020 study (“Exploratory Action-Research on Female Genital Mutilation Practices in the Philippines,” Professor Aminoding Limpao of Mindanao State University, et al) found a staggering four out of five Bangsamoro females that participated in the study underwent FGM. And there is no law particularly regulating sex reassignment surgery for the young. One can only presume that reaching the age of majority (i.e., 18) is needed to go through that procedure.
Nevertheless, considering the psychological damage that such surgeries can bring to those that undergo them, the government may want to seriously look into the matter of prohibiting such. It would be good for Congress to pass legislation criminalizing sex reassignment surgery for children, as well as FGM, but the Executive branch still has legal instruments with which to prosecute.
There is Art. 262 (“mutilation”) of the Revised Penal Code, which punishes “any person who shall intentionally mutilate another by depriving him, either totally or partially, of some essential organ for reproduction.” There is also RA 9745 (the “Anti-Torture Act of 2009”), which deals with the “mutilation or amputation of the essential parts of the body such as the genitalia.”
Then there is the case of Silverio vs. Republic (G.R. No. 174689), where the Supreme Court — quite correctly — ruled that while surgery may alter a person’s “body and appearance through the intervention of modern surgery, no law authorizes the change of entry as to sex in the civil registry for that reason.” The Court went on to say (again correctly) that to recognize the sex change “will have serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy consequences.” First is its effect on marriage, which is a “special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman.” Furthermore, “there are various laws which apply particularly to women such as the provisions of the Labor Code on employment of women, certain felonies under the Revised Penal Code and the presumption of survivorship … These laws underscore the public policy in relation to women which could be substantially affected” if sex changes were recognized.
Because, as the Supreme Court wisely points out (in a great example of rejecting judicial legislation), “the sex of a person is determined at birth” and is “immutable.” Thus, “sex is defined as ‘the sum of peculiarities of structure and function that distinguish a male from a female’ or ‘the distinction between male and female.’ Female is ‘the sex that produces ova or bears young’ and male is ‘the sex that has organs to produce spermatozoa for fertilizing ova.’”
There is, however, that interesting case of Aguirre vs. DoJ (G.R. No. 170723), where the Court tackled the issue of “does vasectomy deprive a man, totally or partially, of some essential organ of reproduction,” thus categorizing the same as a “mutilation” punishable under the Revised Penal Code? The answer is no, the Supreme Court for some reason saying that while a vasectomy denies a man his power of reproduction, such procedure does not deprive him, “either totally or partially, of some essential organ for reproduction.”
Ok then.
Jemy Gatdula is a senior fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence
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