President Donald Trump declares there are only two options for human babies, male or female. However, there are many exceptions to this simplistic rule.
Approximately 70,000 to 180,000 babies are born each year in the U.S. with ambiguous genitalia. Gender assignment at that point is a guess. And the complexity continues after birth.
A few examples: You can be born appearing female but have a 5-alpha reductase deficiency and grow a penis at age 12.
You can be born legally male with X and Y chromosomes, but your body is insensitive to androgens and by puberty you appear female, Swyer syndrome.
You can be born legally male with X and Y chromosomes, but your Y chromosome is missing the SRY gene and thus you will develop female reproductive organs.
You can be born legally female with two X chromosomes, but you also have a Y chromosome, which gives you a male body, Klinefelter syndrome.
These are just a few of the complexities in human gender expression.
Do we really want our politicians to wade into gender and sexual hormone expression in the human body and make political declarations that are at odds with modern science?
Why are they picking on such a small population of our children? How are they hurting you and me?
Shame on Trump and the Republican party for making this a political issue. Their attack on transgender individuals implies that only pure male and pure female forms of the human body exist.
This is not true.
Mary Wegmann
Port Angeles