Sharon Keogan: Children are a medical issue, not a culture war
Sharon Keogan responds to the Taoiseach's remarks yesterday that children could be transgender, arguing the matter is one of medicine and child welfare rather than culture. She warns of the potential harms from uncritical acceptance of child self-identification and medical interventions such as puberty blockers.
Sharon Keogan explains why she abandoned a prepared speech on rural communities to address the Taoiseach's comments. She challenges the framing of the issue as a culture war and demands the Taoiseach answer for his stance in the Dáil.
Keogan calls attention to medical and psychological objections raised by professionals to unthinking acceptance of children self-identifying their gender. She highlights the real harms she associates with interventions - infertility, osteoporosis and irreversible surgical outcomes - and insists these are medical and welfare issues, not mere culture debates.
Keogan accuses the Taoiseach and his party of having backed policies she sees as dangerous, including puberty blockers for children, allowing men into women's prisons and sports, and efforts she describes as erasing women from constitutional protections. She argues Ireland has long been engaged in these debates, driven in part by those in government and Fine Gael.
Keogan closes by asking the Taoiseach to address these concerns directly in the chamber. She frames her intervention as a call for clarity and a reassessment of policy where medical evidence and child welfare are at stake.
Immediate response
Sharon Keogan explains why she abandoned a prepared speech on rural communities to address the Taoiseach's comments. She challenges the framing of the issue as a culture war and demands the Taoiseach answer for his stance in the Dáil.
Medical risks and child welfare
Keogan calls attention to medical and psychological objections raised by professionals to unthinking acceptance of children self-identifying their gender. She highlights the real harms she associates with interventions - infertility, osteoporosis and irreversible surgical outcomes - and insists these are medical and welfare issues, not mere culture debates.
Political accountability
Keogan accuses the Taoiseach and his party of having backed policies she sees as dangerous, including puberty blockers for children, allowing men into women's prisons and sports, and efforts she describes as erasing women from constitutional protections. She argues Ireland has long been engaged in these debates, driven in part by those in government and Fine Gael.
Demand for answers
Keogan closes by asking the Taoiseach to address these concerns directly in the chamber. She frames her intervention as a call for clarity and a reassessment of policy where medical evidence and child welfare are at stake.
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Transcript
Thank you, Mayor and Leader. I was originally intending to talk today about rural communities, but I now find myself compelled to respond to the comments made by Aunt Taoiseach yesterday, where he confirmed his belief that children could be transgender. Now, his belief is one matter. I will not spend time here going into the long list of objections raised by many medical and psychological professionals to the unthinking acceptance of children self-identifying their gender and the huge potential dangers this causes when this leads to medical intervention such as puberty blockers. I've made that case many times before in this chamber. What is particularly galling was Aunt Taoiseach's assertion that we should not get into culture wars like they have in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Well, first off, I have absolutely object to the hand-waving of this issue as a culture war issue. It is not. It's a medical issue. It is an issue of child welfare and even scientific truth. It is one thing if we have raging debates over political correctness, over people being cancelled for offence of jokes. What is and isn't acceptable in public discourse or media, that is all culture and debating it is culture war. But there is nothing merely cultural about young people who are suffering from infertility or osteoporosis or have to live with the irreversible reality of sex change surgeries. That is real, life-ruining medical damage. Would he call the scoliosis crisis a culture war issue? Of course not. And second, the Taoiseach acts as if we are just now being dragged into a culture war. Yet his party has uncritically backed puberty blockers for children, men in women's prisons and sports and erasing women from the constitution despite, as we saw in the referenda, there has been huge opposition to these things. Far from avoiding a culture war, Ireland has been deeply engaged in one for years and his government, his party and his coalition party's Fine Gael have been driving it for years. So I'd like the Taoiseach to come in here and deal with that issue.