Dear Governor Baker,
As a citizen of the State of Massachusetts I am emailing you
today to demand you not sign the Bill H140, Reparative Therapy Ban. A parent
and/or parents have the right to seek and ask for healthcare counsel, advice,
information, recommendations, assessments, evaluations, tests, and/or
treatments, regimens or modalities from a doctor, therapist, nurse, or other
healthcare provider of their choice for any health reason or purpose.
Parents have the right to select or reject any individual as
a healthcare advisor and the right to choose what type of medical treatment
they provide for their child. Parents have the responsibility and authority to
make medical decisions on behalf of their children. In most cases, a child's
parents are the persons who care the most about their child and know the most
about him or her. As a result, parents are better situated than most others to
understand the unique needs of their child and to make decisions that are in
the child’s interests. Furthermore, since many medical decisions will also
affect the child's family, parents can factor family issues and values into
medical and decisions about their children.
When it comes to
treating young people who believe they are the opposite sex, who either suffer
from gender dysphoria or self-identify as transgender, physicians have been
instructed by their professional associations to provide "affirmative
care." Transition-affirming therapies are virtually untested and inflict
lasting harms: decreased sexual function, increased health risks, and sterility,
just to name a few. Instead of providing parents with medical information and
evidence-based studies, parents are told that these risky treatments will
prevent their child from committing suicide, blurring the line between
“informed consent” and “coercion."
This Bill H140 is the violation of care and safety of our
children, it lends to further heinous crimes against children, parental and
family rights.
Sincerely yours,
Joy M. Pelc
