Elliot Page — an actress formerly known as Ellen Page who came out as a man as an adult — rallied outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday as justices heard oral arguments in a case surrounding Tennessee’s law banning sex change drugs and procedures for minors who believe they are transgender.
The X-Men and Juno star, who had her healthy breasts removed in 2021 after announcing her “transgender” identity to the public the year before, called for minors to have access to the same sex-mutilating drugs and surgeries she has obtained, claiming that such methods are “safe and effective.”
“No matter how much I publicly speak about my life being transformed for the better because of gender-affirming medical care, too many people ignore my words and instead project their fears onto my self-love. What is it about our joy that makes people so uncomfortable? I mean, they debate the legitimacy of the healthcare that allows us to thrive,” she claimed in front of a crowd of supporters.“But is this really about healthcare? No. I mean, the evidence proves that this medical care is safe and effective.”
She continued by stating that while while “trans joy…deserves more public awareness,” she also wants “acknowledge [her] trans grief.”
“Grief for years lost. For how hard I attempted to negotiate a way out of being transgender,” she said. “I was a trans kid, and as an adult, my heart aches for that little guy and for all the trans youth that are struggling.”
She concluded her short speech by saying, “I love being trans, and I love being alive, and I want everyone to have access to the care that has changed my life. So let’s fight for it.”
Page recalled in an extensive TIME interview in 2021 that she wanted to “be a boy” by the age of nine. She also revealed in an interview published last year in the Los Angeles Times that she scheduled her double mastectomy “within weeks” of hearing voices in her head and engaging in a brutal round of self-mutilation, including punching herself in the face.
Page has long advocated for confused minors to have sex changes, and has stood against laws in various states created to protect minors from the potentially irreversible consequences of these drugs and procedures. She has gone as far claiming that such laws will ultimately be responsible for the “death of children.”
READ MORE: Biden Administration Promotes Transgender Sex-Change Surgery, Puberty Blockers for Minors
In the United States, the top-down push for minors to obtain sex-mutilating drugs and surgeries under the misleading moniker “gender-affirming care” is clear, promulgated by President Joe Biden’s White House, academia, large hospitals, and major medical organizations.
At the root, these actors, along with the proliferation of gender ideology on social media, ultimately promote the false idea that human beings can be a different sex than what they were born as. Even further, the gender ideology complex claims these individuals should take sex-change drugs and get sex-change procedures to align their outward appearance with how they feel on the inside.
The side effects for sex change drugs and procedures can be severe, including irreversible mutilation and infertility. Some of these so-called treatments include double mastectomies (the removal of healthy breasts), female and male genital mutilation and removal, facial feminization and masculinization, hormone treatments, and puberty blockers that can cause chemical sterilization. Puberty blockers can also have long-term impact on bone growth, bone density, and growth spurts, according to Mayo Clinic.
Transgender activists frequently claim that such sex-mutilating drugs and procedures for confused minors reduce suicides and improve mental health — dubious claims which increasingly appear untrue as more studies and data come to light.
Other research has indicated that a majority of children who are confused about their sex grow out of that feeling by the time they become adults. European countries that pushed sex change drugs and surgeries for minors before the United States are notably reversing course over concerns about long-term impacts.
While the push toward transgenderism is heavily ideological, a report released in December 2020 found that the U.S. sex reassignment surgery market size was valued at $267 million in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 14.4 percent from 2020 to 2027.
The Biden administration ultimately asked the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling from the Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Tennessee’s law protecting minors from sex-mutilating drugs and surgeries.
“This is a relatively new diagnosis with ever-shifting approaches to care over the last decade or two. Under these circumstances, it is difficult for anyone to be sure about predicting the long-term consequences of abandoning age limits of any sort for these treatments,” Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was joined by Judge Amul Thapar, wrote for the 6th Circuit.
READ MORE: Transgender Curbs Protect Children, Not Sexism, Lawyer Tell SCOTUS
As almost half of the United States has passed laws barring minors from obtaining transgender drugs and surgeries, the resulting Supreme Court ruling will likely have wide-ranging impacts for the future of so-called “gender-affirming care,” as well as parental rights.