Free sex changes for prison inmates

Californians have a new expensive hobby: performing experimental surgeries on prison inmates and sending the bill to the taxpayers.

The new policy in effect in California says prison mental health professionals may refer inmates for sex-change surgery if the prisoner meets certain criteria.

Prisoners must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria (confusion) and have lived as the opposite gender for at least 12 months to qualify.

The bottom line is that this is an expensive attempt on the part of California politicians to win the "Most Politically Correct Award" at mass taxpayer expense, and more importantly, at the expense of lives of those transgendered. Johns Hopkins University ended its research on the topic of transgender reassignment because it learned it led to suicide and numerous other complications, but California politicians are science deniers here. They think they somehow know something that the leading scientists in the field don't know.

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This is tantamount to the Tuskegee trials, where they did heinous experiments on prisoners. This isn't about compassion. This is a Mengelean (Josef Mengele style) macabre fascination with being some sort of science denying superhero in the competition of political correctness, exacted on the weakest minded in our society.

Transgendered people are more than six times as likely to end up in prison as the general population. Since they can no longer experiment on the Johns Hopkins subjects, they will use prisoners who have even higher depression and suicide rates, and hope that fewer care that they die.

I appeared on "Fox & Friends" to debate this issue.

Here's the math: The rate of depression after transgender is very high. Karolinska Institute in Sweden followed 324 people for up to 30 years after they had sex-reassignment surgery. The study showed that about 10 years after the surgery, transgendered people began to have increased mental difficulties.

As they progressed through life, their suicide mortality rose almost 20 times above the comparable non-transgender population.

Dr. Paul McHugh, a former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and author of "Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash over Meaning, Memory, and Mind," says the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered.

He points to the data as evidence that the high suicide rate trumps the typical surgery prescription propagated by many as the answer to gender confusion.

Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic tracked those who forewent gender reassignment. They found that 70 percent to 80 percent of those who face the confusing identity crisis, but do not ultimately have the surgery, report that their feelings dissipate over time.

Johns Hopkins ended its sexual reassignment surgery in 1970 for the above reasons. Still, there is little in the news about that.

Since data proves that 80 percent of people who experience gender confusion in their lives ultimately abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if given psychological integration therapy instead of surgical gender mutilation, these medical interventions come close to abuse.

Dr. McHugh recommends a prescription of devoted parenting instead.

Dr. Judith Reisman, a leading expert in the field of sex and gender, said, "They simply reject the factual data. Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, soon everyone is repeating it, too. That is what has happened. Fact checking seems to be a way of the past."

The money is the least of concerns here, but let's look at how much California taxpayers will pay for this travesty of lives.

Each surgery itself will cost around $50,000-$100,000 per prisoner. Since transgendered people are six times as likely to be in prison, that number is likely to grow disproportionately as compared to the rest of the prison population. Out of 125,000 inmates in the California system, 400 are being treated for gender dysphoria now. If they undergo surgical gender mutilation, it would cost taxpayers around $400 million, and that is before the ensuing counseling and recidivism costs that, based on Johns Hopkins research, is eminent.

Will this benefit for prisoners lead some to crime so that they, too, can get their surgery free?

Famously, Bruce Jenner is on the verge of losing his reality show, and has been involved in a tragic accident that took a life. He says he was so stressed with the aftermath of his gender reassignment, he is having a hard time coping with "emotional issues" and was "inattentive."

This is inhumane and ominous. California needs to find a different hobby.

Gina Loudon teams up with her fellow Politichicks in their first blockbuster, "What Women Really Want" -- available at the WND Superstore