The Left’s Language Trap: How “Child Led Care” Became Code for Child Abuse

Every movement that drifts away from truth does so through language. Words are redefined, reality is blurred, and suddenly the unthinkable is repackaged as compassion. That is exactly what has happened in the debate over so called “gender affirming care” for minors.

In a recent City Journal interview, clinical psychologist Dr. Laura Edwards Leeper, one of the first clinicians to run a pediatric gender clinic in the United States, warned that the entire field has abandoned caution. She described a culture where children as young as ten are being taken at their word, without thorough evaluation, and ushered down a path toward puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries that permanently alter healthy bodies.

She called it what it is: “child led.” In other words, the adults have surrendered.

The Power and Peril of Language

The Left’s strategy has been simple but devastatingly effective: rename the act.
They no longer talk about “chemical castration” or “removing healthy organs.” They call it “care.” They say “gender affirming.” They say “life saving.”

But changing the label does not change the truth. When you block puberty in a child, you are preventing normal development. When you flood a teenage body with opposite sex hormones, you are introducing lifelong medical dependency. When you amputate healthy organs, you are not healing, you are harming.

The word “care” is meant to disarm. It is a rhetorical shield that hides the barbarism beneath the surface. Dr. Edwards Leeper herself warned that many of the children being treated today will serve as “the guinea pigs” for a medical experiment with almost no long term data.

“Child Led” Is Not Compassion, It Is Cowardice

No one lets a child decide their own bedtime, their own diet, or their own schooling. But we are told they can choose to chemically or surgically change their sex before they can legally drive a car or vote.

This is not compassion, it is cowardice.
Adults are called to protect children, not affirm their confusion. Yet today’s gender clinics and activist groups have made an ideology out of abandoning that duty.

The phrase “child led” sounds gentle. It sounds empowering. But what it really means is that parents and doctors have surrendered to a movement that elevates feelings over truth and experimentation over protection.

Missouri Must Draw the Line

Missouri has the chance to lead where Washington has failed. Amendment 3 (A3) will make it crystal clear that no child in this state will be subjected to chemical castration or sex change surgeries.

A3 ensures that Missouri hospitals cannot be pressured by activists or out of state groups to perform these procedures. It restores sanity to medicine and compassion to law. And it tells every child in Missouri the truth, that their worth is not found in a scalpel or a syringe, but in the image of God in which they were created.

Join Us in Protecting Missouri’s Children

MO Protects is leading the charge to pass Amendment 3 in 2026, but we need your help. Every yard sign printed, every event hosted, every mile driven to gather signatures costs real dollars.

➡️ Donate today to defend truth, protect children, and push back against the propaganda machine that calls abuse “care.”
➡️ Join the movement to volunteer, give, or spread the word.

Together, we can expose the lies, rescue the next generation from this madness, and make Missouri a refuge for children again.