By Brian Mark Weber

We all grumble about paying taxes — at least those of us who pay them. In the end, however, we dutifully send our money to the IRS each paycheck or each spring in the hope that the fruit of our labor will result in paved roads, safe bridges, and a sufficiently funded military.

Without a doubt, some of those taxpayer funds will be wasted on outrageous government programs such as environmental research into the mating patterns of frogs. And who can forget the military’s overpriced toilet seat, which now costs 10 grand?

But sex changes for children? Say it isn’t so.

Sadly, it is.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra recently confirmed in written testimony to the House that the Biden administration now supports helping children “transition” with your tax dollars.

Becerra was questioned during hearings before the House Committee on Education and Labor about whether government funding should be used for chemical castration and sex-change operations on minors, and whether doctors should be required to perform these procedures. He said, “The HHS website has a list of the new procedures that will now be covered by Medicare and Medicaid,” adding, “Payers, both public and private, should cover treatments which medical experts have determined to be medically necessary.”

In other words, yes, the Biden administration is planning to force doctors to perform “sex changes” and other “transition”-related surgeries, and the American taxpayer will fund it. It’s no wonder, then, that “gender clinics” have been popping up around the country. After all, enticing children to undergo gender-transition surgery is lucrative big business these days.

The Gender Mapping Project highlights the disturbing explosion of these clinics just in the last 10 years, from almost none to at least 400 today. The project’s website claims, “We are dedicated to delivering the truth about what is happening to children and youth by documenting the hard numbers on how many gender clinics, how many surgical clinics, and recording evidence where necessary.”

Fortunately, some courageous people are trying to stop this assault on the most innocent and vulnerable among us. Last year, California Congressman Doug LaMalfa introduced the Protecting Children from Experimentation Act, and Kansas Senator Roger Marshall introduced the End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act of 2021. Of course, neither of these bills saw the light of day in a Congress controlled by Democrats.

Marshall, an M.D., put it this way: “Protecting our children from experimental gender reassignment treatments and permanent hormone blockers couldn’t be more important. These medical experiments are not FDA-approved and have irreversible consequences for the health of our kids.”

Michelle Cretella, M.D., the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, weighed in with LaMalfa and Marshall: “Transgender interventions in minors can lead to permanent sterility. No one is born with an opposite-sexed brain, and gender identity can align with biological sex across childhood and adulthood both with and without counseling to treat underlying traumas. The sterilization of emotionally vulnerable youth in any other circumstance would be seen for exactly what it is: eugenics.”

Author, columnist, and documentarian Matt Walsh investigated a transgender clinic in Nashville this fall, posting a video in which a clinic spokesperson excitedly boasts about how much money a hospital could bring in by drugging, castrating, and reconstituting a child’s sexual organs.

In Pennsylvania, taxpayers have funneled more than $16 million into children’s reassignment surgeries and related surgeries since 2015, according to the Pennsylvania Family Institute.

In Maine, the number of these surgeries has quadrupled in the past four years. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that children there are receiving irreversible treatments under the guise of gender-affirming care.

The list goes on and on.

If Americans even realize or agree that this is a problem, too many of them are simply hoping it goes away. Outrageously, it’s not going anywhere. The “transition” movement is booming, and it has powerful political and financial support.

It’s hard to think of another issue that’s more pressing right now. We’ve made great strides to protect the unborn, but it shouldn’t surprise us that the same people supporting the killing of a baby just moments before birth would be willing to castrate a 10-year-old.

They’re coming for our children, and it’s long past time for the rest of us to stand up and save them.