Candidates Call Out Gov. Abbott on Child Mutilation Experiments Ahead of Election

ROUND ROCK — As voters across the state head to the polls Tuesday to decide the statewide primary elections, candidates for some of the most powerful elected servant positions in Texas gathered at a restaurant near Austin to speak out on one of the state’s most urgent issues: protecting Texas children.

“The fact that we have this child gender modification issue—to me, that’s evil. To me, it’s heinous,” said Lt. Col. Allen West, one of three primary Republican challengers for Texas governor. “And we are promoting something that would tell our kids that we’re chemically and physically castrating them, and we’re not standing up against that.”

Indeed, the issue in Texas drew an international spotlight several years ago with the child abuse case of Dallas-area 9-year-old James Younger, whose mother told him he was a girl and wanted to force him—against his father’s wishes—to take sterilizing puberty blocker and cross-sex hormone drugs and eventually be castrated.

James’ case became a statewide rallying cry on the issue, with the Republican Party of Texas making it a legislative priority and more than 2 million GOP primary voters supporting a ban on the operations. However, at the Capitol in Austin last year, top Republican lawmakers repeatedly killed the effort, and Abbott refused to include the issue in the Legislature’s three special sessions.