I recently met Neeraja Deshpande, the 24-year-old author of the Independent Women’s Forum report “The Disjointed Reality in New Mexico: New Mexico Gender Policies Clash with Public Opinion.” As we chatted over breakfast at a local café, I asked Neeraja what prompted her interest in this issue. Although I know many parents and grandparents who are concerned about NM’s transgender policies, I was surprised that at age 24, Neeraja is so passionate about this topic.
Neeraja shared her experience growing up in Massachusetts, where 10 years ago as a high school student, she began witnessing her peers being affirmed in transgenderism. Throughout her attendance at high school and then at all-women’s Wellesley College, Neeraja saw the confusion and harms caused by transgender affirmation. “It was devastating to see some of my friends’ lives being ruined through medical gender treatment,” Neeraja told me. “And beyond those girls, I saw the harms in my peer group as a whole, as we all struggled to understand how basic biological reality could be portrayed as a myth.”
One of the NM laws highlighted in Neeraja’s report is HB7, which was signed into law by the New Mexico legislature and Governor in 2023. Under HB7, public school teachers and school nurses must facilitate access to transgender (and abortion) treatment for children with no parental consent and no age restrictions. Schools can be fined $5,000 if teachers or nurses "interfere" by talking to parents about their children's transgender healthcare (which can be facilitated in school-based healthcare centers).
The "gender affirming care" that our state government wants to make sure kids have access to includes puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries wherein healthy body parts are permanently removed. The medications include some that have been used to chemically castrate sex offenders. Known risks of these “gender affirming” medical treatments include sterility, heart problems, blood clots, hormone-dependent cancers, sexual dysfunction, and a lifetime of remorse. The governor and progressive lawmakers are cutting parents out of crucial decisions that can affect the rest of their children's lives.
Neeraja’s report includes recent polling which shows that New Mexicans are overwhelmingly in opposition to HB7. According to the report, 77% of New Mexicans (including 70% of Hispanics and 66% of Democrats) are concerned that NM laws could result in children being fast-tracked into transgender-related medical treatments without their parents’ consent. 77% of New Mexicans (including 73% of Hispanics and 66% of Democrats) agree that “minors under the age of 18 should not be able to access puberty blockers.”
These concerns are not just hypothetical situations. According to the Stop the Harm Database analysis of insurance claims, in New Mexico 119 children are sex change patients, 41 children have had sex change surgeries, and 81 children have received hormones and/or puberty blockers. The hospitals providing these services include Lovelace, UNM, Presbyterian, Christus St Vincent, and Memorial Medical Center, among others.
Most of the kids who experience gender confusion suffer from anxiety, depression, trauma, learning problems, and/or social problems that make them have a hard time fitting in. They see transgenderism as a way out of their mental distress. But it doesn't work that way. The independent review of all the evidence which was commissioned by the National Health Service of the U.K. found that gender affirming care does not reduce the risk of suicide.
Countries such as Finland, Sweden, and the U.K. were far ahead of the U.S. in affirming gender transition for youths. According to Finland’s top pediatric gender specialist, Dr Riitakerttu Kaltiala, four out of five kids will grow out of their gender confusion. All of these countries are now backtracking and changing how they handle gender confusion in children because they have seen that gender affirmation can do more harm than good. Our lawmakers need to learn from these experiences. Compassionate care for gender-confused children needs to focus on addressing the underlying mental health issues, not drugs and surgeries that arrest development and can cause sterility. As Neeraja wrote, NM lawmakers should “ban experimental gender medicine for vulnerable minors.”
Sarah Smith is co-leader of the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance (non-partisan statewide grassroots coalition) and Vice Chair of the Coalition of Conservatives in Action in Las Cruces. Sarah is also a homeschooling mother of two teens, natural healthcare practitioner, and former NASA aerospace engineer.
