Did you know it is now illegal in the state of New Mexico for doctors, therapists, teachers or anyone else who receives state funds to prevent or discourage a child from receiving puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, surgeries, or even socially transition to the opposite sex?

This is the result of the enactment of the Reproductive and Gender Affirming Health Care Act that most New Mexicans thought was about protecting doctors who provided abortion care to women.

Once again, special interest groups have successfully force-teamed the rights of parents and caretakers with the pseudo-scientific belief that their children can be born in the “wrong body,” and require experimental, dangerous and expensive medical interventions to fix this mistake. Many of these “gender affirming” interventions cause life-long complications.

Molly McClain, head of the UNM Deseo clinic, doesn’t seem to think there’s anything worth worrying about. She claims that no teen under the age of 18 is receiving “gender affirming” care from her clinic without the permission of parents.

But, from my own personal experience, many parents are pressured into accepting these treatments for their children, and put under duress when they agree to these treatments.

I was told that “affirmation” was the only way to relieve my child’s suffering. He had threatened self-harm and his extreme behavioral changes made my family’s life like hell.

I was told I should go through with these treatments, even though puberty suppression is dangerous and has known and unknown long-term physical consequences that continue even after stopping these drugs.

I was told puberty suppression is a “pause button”, but it is not.

This is a claim that has been debunked by every medical review board that has taken a serious review of the evidence, including those in Denmark, Switzerland, Finland and Norway.

The latest country to stop the use of so-called puberty blockers is England, as the British National Health Service announced last week that the evidence of their benefit versus the harm they caused was so profound that they would no longer allow their use outside of carefully controlled experimental studies.

Why won’t America catch up? What happened to trusting “the science?”

I was told it was better to have a live daughter than a dead son — which is not only emotionally manipulative, but a false choice. I will never have a daughter – I have a distressed son who has been falsely led to believe that he can change sex, and that this change will magically remove all of his mental anguish.

When actual studies are performed, instead of internet polls and surveys, research shows over and over again that the suicide rate for people who believe they are transgender actually increases after affirmative care, and that rate additionally increases as the amount of interventions performed increase.

Recently leaked files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) document the reality that most parents agreeing to these interventions are scared, confused, emotionally compromised, and are not able to understand what they are being told by the medical practitioners.

Some believe their children are gay, and want them to “transition” so that they will be straight. These files also provide evidence that the medical practitioners view parents as a hurdle to be overcome, and they will use every manipulation technique they can to override their concerns and objections.

Over and over again, it is clear that WPATH is less concerned with the well-being of patients and families, and more concerned with pushing extreme medical interventions to further their own ideological viewpoint.

I said “no,” and as a result, my son remains in a healthy body.

His distress is diminishing with time because he is growing up. This is the most common outcome for children and teens who are not provided with medical interventions — they grow up and move on.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is showing herself to be less concerned about the actual health and happiness of the families of New Mexico, and more interested in the money being pumped into the state by the “gender care” industry, which has been projected to bring millions of dollars a year to our beleaguered hospitals.

No child should be told that they are born in the wrong body, and no ethical medical provider should be performing dangerous medical experiments on children, teens and vulnerable adults.

Wearing a white coat and going to medical school does not make you a good person with sound judgment. Having a belief that something is true does not make it reality.

Sex is real and unchangeable. Understanding that is necessary for the physical health and mental well being of all citizens of New Mexico.

Repeal this law so that our gender-confused children can get real help, and our state can become a safe place to raise our families.