DYSTOPIA – In an apparent and horrifying act of governmental overreach, a troubled teenager has been removed from her home after Child Protective Services determined that she needed to transition.
The parents in question don’t seem to be neglectful bigots.
They simply think, as many rational people do, that irreversibly medicalizing a teenager might cause more harm than good.
These parents say they listened when their daughter, aged 13, said she thought she might be a boy. They agreed to send her to a therapist — not to change her mind, but to further explore her confusion.
Imagine That
But here we are, in a culture so reactionary that nuance no longer exists — that a stranger who works for one of the most fallible, problematic government agencies can usurp parental rights and put a child on course to hormone treatments and even surgery.
It’s nothing short of indoctrination.
The case in question involves Jennifer Kolstad, now 14 years old, from Glasgow, Montana. While at school in August 2023, Jennifer (her first name is a pseudonym) told friends she wanted to commit suicide.
These friends went to the police and, later that night, the CPS showed up at the Kolstad house. Jennifer’s father Todd and stepmother Krista were cooperative. They allowed the case worker to look around their home and interview Jennifer alone, but prefaced this with critical information: Jennifer – they claimed – was a troubled child who had issues with telling the truth.
While talking to the case worker, Jennifer said she had taken an overdose of pills and swallowed toilet-bowl cleaner — despite Krista saying she’d been home all day and nothing was amiss.
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Still, they took Jennifer to the hospital, where they say blood work determined her system was clean. But her medical notes are also said to have indicated that Jennifer considered herself a boy and preferred to be called ‘Leo’.
That’s when this nightmare began. Todd and Krista have since lost custody.
‘I love my daughter unconditionally,’ Todd said, ‘and only want her to refrain from making decisions until she has the maturity and life experiences to understand what the consequences are for her actions’.
Does that sound crazy to you? It does to the brain trust at Montana’s CPS, who, Krista says, allowed an aide to talk to Jennifer during her hospital stay about having a double mastectomy. At fourteen years old.
We know that the human brain isn’t fully developed until the mid-to-late 20s. Research shows that adults make decisions using the prefrontal cortex — where rationality lives — while teenagers use the amygdala, the emotional part.
It’s not crazy to reconsider inculcating impressionable young minds with thoughts of procedures that can leave a child permanently infertile or without body parts. In fact, nothing makes more sense.
We have no longitudinal studies on transitioning during childhood. We have no data on the long-term physical and psychological impacts.
What we do have is a medical establishment, backed by a super-progressive left, acting with utmost surety and hubris.
Whatever happened to ‘first do no harm’?
Still, the Kolstads say they agreed with CPS recommendations to have Jennifer admitted for specialist in-patient treatment at a mental health institution. However, they were concerned when the agency told them the only place available was in Wyoming.
That state allows minors to have gender-altering medical procedures: hormone blockers and surgery. These are illegal in Montana.
The Kolstads tried to raise their objections, saying there were questions that needed answering before they consented.
But just ten minutes later, CPS was at their door with the police, who took Jennifer away — to Wyoming.
After one month, she was transferred back to Montana to live in a group home, where she has been allowed to ‘socially transition’, binding her chest, shaving her head and joining all-boys groups. She is still there.
Understandably, the Kolstads now feel they have no choice but to go public.
Ask yourself: Would such a gross, unthinking violation of parental rights happen to a privileged couple? The kind of people who have the money to hire top lawyers, who might make some low-wattage functionary of a state agency think twice?
