PA FREEDOM CAUCUS VOWS TO BLOCK PENN STATE FUNDING DUE TO PEDIATRIC PUBERTY BLOCKER POLICY
Harrisburg, PA- The Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus announced unified opposition to the use of pediatric puberty-blockers via the health institutions at Pennsylvania State-Related Universities. These include The Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, and the University of Pittsburgh. This opposition comes on the heels of the discovery of a Penn State Health Children’s Hospital policy that would prescribe puberty blockers to children under the age of 10.
The policy, which appears in a list of related gender care options, reads: “Pediatric endocrinologist: The clinic’s pediatric endocrinologist provides puberty-blocking medications, cares for people with differences of sexual development and cares for patients who are younger than 10 years old.” [1]
PA Freedom Caucus member Rep. Aaron Bernstine (R-Butler/Lawrence) sent a formal inquiry to all three institutions on May 15 requesting data pertaining to use of pharmacological intervention and medical procedures of "Gender Affirming Care" provided on minors.
Penn State, Temple, and Pitt are state-related institutions and are poised to receive $882,491,000 in the 2023-24 budget. Each State-Related entity requires a two-thirds of the State House of Representatives and State Senate to receive this funding.
“The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus will not even consider a yes vote if policies that endanger the health and welfare of children remain unchanged.” said PAFC Chair Rep. Dawn Keefer (R-York) “To sit by and allow public funds to be used in experimental activities causing irreversible harm to children, some under the age of 10, makes lawmakers complicit in this abuse couched as health care.”
“The two-thirds threshold for approval means that House Democrats will be unable to push through continued funding for “non-preferred” institutions without Republican support,” said Rep. David Rowe (R-Snyder/Union/Juniata/Mifflin). “Our constituents can rest assured that the PA Freedom Caucus will lead the effort to unite Republicans in opposition to such funding as long as any policy remains in place that endangers the health and welfare of our most vulnerable and valuable demographic, our children.”
[1] https://www.pennstatehealth.org/childrens/services-treatments/gender-health-program#:~:text=Pediatric%20endocrinologist%3A%20The%20clinic's%20pediatric,younger%20than%2010%20years%20old.
Follow PAFC on Twitter HERE: https://twitter.com/PAFreedomCaucus
Be effective, or get re-elected by saying that you tried, but you just couldn't do it, because you need 15 more Republican "wins", in the next election.
If one or more parent(s) want(s) to insist that his/her/their minor children live the life that the parent(s) consider to be "in the best interests" of "the family", until such time as those minor children reach (or "might reach") the age of majority, what American Government --Federal, State, or local/municipal-- is empowered to gainsay that parental decision?
Under what circumstances?
It is my understanding, as a graduate of a northern-Virginia high-school (and as an attendee in certain classes and seminars, post-high-school), the societal role of an American Legislature seems to amount to "defining 'right and wrong' and 'the way things should be', in a continually-regenerating, secular Republic whose population (ALL of whose members are equal in stature, rights, privilege, and [possibly] duty, in the eyes of the Law) might or might not (at that Citizen's option) individually claim, embrace, and/or espouse an undefined aggregate or amalgam of creeds, religions, philosophies, and ancestral heritages, NONE of which --if only because of the Constitutional prohibition against the Law being permitted to taint or "corrupt" "the blood" of an American family lineage, by requiring the "posterity", even of a traitor, to be required to atone for crimes committed by a forbear-- is, in fact, an AMERICAN ethos.
Surely, there is no "rule" that cannot be "gamed".
Anyone who can endow a chair at a University, in one Commonwealth, is capable of moving that chair to some other institution, whether "at-will" or "as circumstances require".
If I were going to deny funding to a State-supported University, in Pennsylvania, I would have done so, the year after a homeless man, in Philadelphia, spent 20 minutes running a series of Google searches on the nature of the "powdered alcohol" that was being debated, in Harrisburg, according to the Philadelphia "Inquirer" of the day.
The Philadelphia "Inquirer" reported that the Legislature understood "powdered alcohol" to be a "powder" that, when mixed with water, produces a CHEMICAL REACTION that transforms the WATER into a "grain alcohol" that is "[more potent than any distilled liquor available for sale in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania]".
Knowing --based on 35-year old memories of my 10th-grade chemistry class-- that "powdered alcohol" had to be "other than that which was being reported", I performed my Internet-searches; and, then, contacted Members of the State Legislature and an Officer of a certain, Executive Branch Agency, warning all, equally, that the "hype" regarding "powdered alcohol" risked casting the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a group of "persons lacking any support, whatsoever, in their efforts to write laws that ESTABLISH JUSTICE within that Commonwealth", regardless of the amount of money that the Legislature appropriates, in any, given year.
[NOTE: My memory of my 10th-Grade chemistry class convinced me that any "reaction" that would strip hydrogen atoms from water and reassemble those atoms a way that would form alcohol, would have been such a sudden, heat-generating "reaction", that a nearly-NUCLEAR-style explosion would happen, when the first drop of water would touch that "powder".
So, I looked up the inventor of "powdered alcohol"; found some mention of the product, at some regulatory Agency, in the Washington, DC area (probably, the FDA); and discovered that "powdered alcohol" was, in fact, "[alcohol that had been squirted through a cologne-type spray-nozzle, with every, resultant droplet being coated with corn-starch]".
Adding water to the "powder" would dissolve the corn-starch coating of the alcohol-droplets, yielding a DILUTED (rather than "exceedingly strong") alcoholic cocktail.
My phone calls to the [State] Government arrived too late; the ban on "powdered alcohol" had already passed the Legislature. The quotes --by Legislators who, having (apparently) been "briefed" on the subject, had made statements to "the media"-- had already been published.
Is there a "Chemistry" major offered, in any of the State-supported institutions of higher learning, which operate within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?
Is there anyone, on the faculty, who might possess knowledge sufficient to imagine the nature of the kind of [al]CHEMICAL transformation that would be necessary, to transform a molecule of water into a molecule of alcohol?
Is there a "channel of communication" which "leverages" the "support" offered by the Legislature, to various groups, institutions, and "stores of specialized knowledge" for the benefit of the People of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in support of such efforts as their Government makes, to "establish justice" (in accordance with the "Preamble" portion of the Constitution of the United States of America?
How was that "channel" instituted? When? Why? By whom?]
Thank you for what you are trying to do. I watch so much of our world being lost as people seem to be sitting on their hands. You will be rewarded for your efforts by someone greater than I.