Our 17 year old son is diagnosed with autism. He also suffered from depressions and has a track record of severe self destructive behavior which we choose to not sum up in this open petition, for his protection and privacy. Just before being institutionalized last year due to highly defiant behavior, he met a girl who wanted to be a boy. Once institutionalized, he managed to convince them that he in fact needs a gender change to be happy, based on expressed aversion to his genitals. To our terrible dismay they actually took him serious and in just a few month's time started injecting him with hormone treatments leading to the eminent gender change. We wrote more letters than we can count, for them to please stop him from his continued self destruction. This time, with help of so called professionals, who refuse to listen to a whole group of people that have been very close to our son's challenges and difficulties documented for over ten years of his life. We even wrote expressing our willingness to consider a possible gender change option if this were to really persist in time, but their current total lack of accountability threatens our son's life if he manages to continue mutilating himself like he continually has done in other ways in the past. The rate of suicide among young people who undergo gender change is very high and this is a case of an already very confused young man, in serious need of balanced guidance. Please sign the petition to have the proper authorities reconsider the gender change practices, at least until we have had a chance to let other professionals give a second opinion and advise about it over an acceptable period of time; this is about our son's Right to Life!!
