This post originally appeared at https://wifamilycouncil.org/radio/help-not-harm/
2025 | Week of March 31 | Radio Transcript #1612
“Help Not Harm” is a policy label that has rightly gained much traction and recognition in recent years, both here in our state and around the country. The phrase refers to legislation designed to protect children struggling with gender confusion from dangerous medical interventions.
A Help Not Harm bill has now been introduced three times in Wisconsin. Last session, the state legislature passed the bill, but Governor Evers vetoed it. The authors are back again this session for the third try.
If passed, AB 104 would bar healthcare practitioners from basically taking any medical action on a minor that is done with the purpose of changing the minor’s body to the opposite biological sex. The medical intervention practices would include prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers, as well as performing surgery.
Affirming a mistaken identity—via names, pronouns, hormones, or surgery—is neither loving nor compassionate. True love seeks the authentic good, which means confronting reality, not supporting falsehoods. Medical interventions such as so-called “gender-affirming care” use harmful means to promote lies, which have devastating consequences, especially for children.
Children suffering from gender dysphoria, of course, deserve compassion, but actual compassion does not come in the form of harmful experiments like puberty blockers or unnecessary—and harmful—surgeries.
Recent scientific studies have confirmed what we know to be the biological truth, naturally in alignment with God’s perfect design: trying to “change” one’s natural sex is not only ill-advised, but also dangerous and frankly impossible.
A study published in the Oxford Academic Journal of Sexual Medicine in February of this year found that individuals who struggle with gender identity and undergo so-called gender transition surgeries are “at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders.” The study found that males who underwent trans surgeries were 120% more likely to have depression and 388% more likely to have anxiety than those suffering from gender dysphoria who did not undergo surgery.
The results for females were less drastic but showcased the same pattern: girls who had undergone surgeries were 56% more likely to suffer from depression and 48% more likely to have anxiety than those who did not undergo surgery.
The Oxford study comes on the heels of the government-funded research last spring that found similar results. In looking at adults visiting the emergency room, the National Institute for Health (NIH) “found that people with a history of gender transition surgeries had much higher rates for PTSD, suicide attempts, and suicides,” than those who did not undergo transition surgeries in the past. [1]
So-called “gender-affirming care” treatments do not address the root causes of gender dysphoria, which are often tied to past trauma and/or mental health disorders. People struggling with gender identity need real help that addresses the root cause of gender dysphoria, and this is most essential for minors in distress, who are at such a vulnerable point in their lives. Children do not have the maturity or brain development necessary to make such consequential decisions about their bodies. Responsible adults need to make sure they get true help and real hope.
Thankfully, President Trump recently signed an executive order entitled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” stating that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” This means that hospitals and other healthcare organizations that have been offering these harmful interventions to children risk losing their federal funding. [2]
Many children’s hospitals across the country have already announced their compliance, but a recent report found that more than 30 hospitals nationwide are still offering transition surgeries, defying the executive order. Executive orders can be great starting points, but we need legislation at the state level to provide long-lasting protection.[3] Should AB 104 pass the state senate, the governor needs to take this third opportunity and do the right thing by Wisconsin’s youth.
For Wisconsin Family Council, this is Julaine Appling, reminding you that God, through the Prophet Hosea, said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
[1] https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/gender-transition-surgery-associated-with-heightened-mental-health-issues-study
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/
[3] https://dailycaller.com/2025/03/19/trump-executive-order-child-sex-changes-hospitals/
Haylee Lawver