Commentary: Maryland should heed the warning of history and not protect experimental surgery

By Jonathan Alexandre
Maryland Family Institute

Maryland law will now provide a get-out-of-jail-free card to doctors performing experimental transgender surgeries on minors. 

Before the category of legally protected healthcare, Maryland has only witnessed one other occasion when the state took significant steps to defend and protect a divisive and destructive practice at the expense of their own–even when other states prohibited it: the slave trade.

During the era of slavery in the United States, neighboring states such as Pennsylvania and free states like Massachusetts enacted laws to prohibit slavery. Maryland chose the opposite, aligning with southern states embracing this heinous practice. Further, our state disregarded the laws of free states which sought to aid and rescue runaway slaves seeking freedom by crossing through Maryland to reach free territories. In fact, the “Free State” chose to pass as many as 11 statutes to resist compliance with free states, thus preserving the interests of slavery in the southern states.

On this present matter, today looks eerily similar– 24 states have banned experimental puberty blockers, hormone therapies and mutilating surgeries for minors. Just like in the 1860’s, Maryland has again chosen a path against the free states, as our legislature recently passed a bill (which is anticipated to be signed by Governor Moore) making “gender affirming care” a type of “legally protected health care” in the state.

This law essentially puts doctors above the law by making them immune from a variety of simple legal accountability measures like subpoenas or allowing investigations by the health occupations board. Put more simply, doctors will be protected from any lawsuit, most investigations and all prosecution for performing gender reassignment surgery.

Maryland will even go so far as to ignore the court orders of other states and limit the governor’s ability to extradite criminals to other states.

In a field that has made our kids lab experiments, this law doesn’t protect the vulnerable or innocent–it protects the massively large financial interests of these “healthcare providers.”

Lawmakers pushing this bill have made incredible claims undermining patients’ rights. Finance Chair Pamela Beidle (D-Anne Arundel) claimed, “This bill is not about treatment. It’s not about age…It’s about protecting the information for the patient and for the doctor,” she said.  She and others are saying the quiet part out loud: there should be no accountability for the damage done to our children in an experimental and often damaging treatment.

Information is necessary for justice. By denying access to subpoenas, protecting witnesses from testifying—even preventing the service of summons and indictments—Maryland is saying to the world it is not concerned with the rights of patients–especially children. Maryland is not protecting the information for the privacy of the patient; they are relegating victims of these doctors to second-class citizens.

Further, the true motive behind this law is laid bare as it conspicuously disregards the pleas and interventions of other states. This is where the parallels of the egregious nature of fugitive slave laws are made plain. 

Just as the fugitive slave laws protected enslavers from any investigation or prosecution while binding the governor from cooperating with petitions from free states, these new laws create the same shield by Maryland’s courts to protect medical providers at the expense of those who suffer under the knife.

Just like fugitive slave laws were then used to safeguard property owners, but now condemned as a testament to cruelty and injustice, these new transgender laws are being hailed by a radical minority as protecting doctors who heroically perform gender transitions on minors. 

However, it will ultimately be remembered as perpetuating a cruel and untested practice that subjected minors to scantily compiled pseudoscience, leading to sterilization and the profound suffering of many.

The country is currently rife with debate over gender reassignment surgery for minors, just as it was over slavery during that time. Maryland’s answer has been—rather than using caution—to instead close off the justice system to the vulnerable. 

Maryland should have protected the rights of all people centuries ago, and it should continue to protect the rights of all people today. 

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