EXCLUSIVE — As Missouri's restrictions on child genital mutilation and chemical castration take effect Monday, state Attorney General Andrew Bailey said his ability to fend off a challenge to the law in court is a judicial "warning shot" to the American medical establishment.
The Show Me State recently passed laws banning doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation surgeries for children, as well as establishing avenues to sue doctors and put them at risk of losing their medical licenses.
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Bailey's office is coming off a win in court Friday, where a judge denied a motion to block the laws from taking effect while litigation continued along the judicial pathway — a rare feat in transgender ban litigation, with Bailey telling the Washington Examiner that Missouri is the first state to succeed in defeating a trial court injunction.
“The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear,” Missouri Circuit Court Judge Stephen R. Ohmer wrote. “Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers.”
It is "a warning shot to those who would march down this path of sterilization of children in the name of some social ideology without any kind of science or medicine to back it up," Bailey, who has made this one of his top issues since taking office in January, said. "It's left-wing ideology masquerading as medicine, and I think we've begun to smoke that out."
"This is a huge win for protecting children in the state of Missouri," he added. "I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children."
Ohmer's ruling is also consequential in lending legitimacy to elected officials challenging the "expertise" of medical professionals, who attempt to use their credentials as a bulwark against challenges to their opinions.
The Missouri Republican said the victory in court was based on bringing medical evidence to the table that countered the American medical establishment's insistence that gender transitions for children is medically necessary and safe despite growing skepticism of that claim.
Bailey's office brought the counterevidence to court and explained that the use of many of the drugs prescribed to children to begin the medical intervention is not even approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
"There's zero clinical assessments showing it's safe or effective, and our expert testified that the American Medical Association is treating the treatment of gender dysphoria different than any other psychological disorder," he said, explaining that the American Medical Association heavily pushes this on children and "ignore psychotherapy."
While many on the pro-child transition side of the argument cite "medical expertise" on the issue, Bailey said the capacity for regulators to question such expertise is not novel, citing the use of lobotomies for mental health patients.
"Somebody would come into a clinic with a mental health condition, and the people that are supposed to be treating them would recommend that they cut out part of their brain," Bailey said, adding that there are other eras of medical fanaticism with treatment options that have proven destructive. "We look back on that now as an abomination. I think history will judge this the same way."
It is because of that history, coupled with some of the questionable medical determinations made by officials such as former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, that Bailey said has "caused a lot of people to grow in their skepticism and reliance on the self-proclaimed experts."
For Bailey, the courtroom is the proper place to decide the issues because the purpose is to get to the "truth and veracity of certain claims." He also noted that the national legal landscape is shifting in favor of bans on the procedures, pointing to a U.S. appeals court decision last week reinstating a similar Alabama law.
He is focused on putting the pro-child transition side on display by "making the other side's quote-unquote experts own the fact that they ignored the science coming out of Europe that said that these were dangerous procedures that have negative long-term health consequences — make them own the fact that the studies they were relying on are weak science."
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While Missouri's laws are still being challenged in court, they will be enforced over the course of the trial, where the merits will be heard and the court already stated that the challengers to the law are unlikely to succeed because of the lack of scientific evidence. Children who have already been put on the pathway to medical intervention will be allowed to continue.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri vowed to continue the court battle, saying, "The case is not over and will go to a full trial on the merits."