American Principles Project Launches $1M Ad Campaign Exhorting Gov. Abbott to Outlaw Child Mutilation Experiments

Despite a years-long fight to protect children in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott and top Republican state lawmakers continue to allow medical practitioners to perform disfiguring gender operations on minors—but Texas’ new pro-family organization is stepping into the fight.

“Today, American Principles Project announced the launch of a new $1 million grassroots lobbying campaign in Texas urging Governor Greg Abbott to take action to protect the state’s children from damaging sex-change procedures,” the nonprofit wrote in a press release Friday.

APP’s first ad, which will be airing on cable and digital platforms across the state, admonishes Abbott to support Senate Bill 1646, a proposed state law to classify certain medical experiments as child abuse.

Currently in Texas, medical professionals are permitted to perform “transgender” operations on children, such as cutting off their healthy body parts or giving them sterilizing cross-sex hormones and puberty blocker drugs.

The overall 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 such 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 state Capitol in Austin last year, top Republican lawmakers repeatedly killed the effort, and Abbott repeatedly refused to bring up the issue in the Legislature’s multiple special sessions.

“A crisis is growing across the country. Children as young as 3 years old are being increasingly exploited for profit by radical left-wing activists, bad doctors, and Big Pharma—even in Texas,” said APP President Terry Schilling. “After reviewing the matter at the request of Gov. Abbott, Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services has rightly concluded that pediatric ‘gender transition’ procedures constitute child abuse. However, Gov. Abbott inexplicably chose not to bring up legislation to ban those procedures during the Legislature’s last special session.”

“Big business is profiting from exploiting our children from pornography online, irreversible sex change procedures, forced vaccinations, and has created an environment where children come last,” added APP Texas Director Chris Hopper.

“Our $1 million grassroots advocacy campaign, fueled by Texans, is calling on Gov. Abbott to protect children from these procedures which cause permanent damage and, in many cases, sterilization,” Schilling concluded. “Texans know that children should be protected from early sexualization—if children can’t legally consent to sex, then how can they consent to a sex change? No one should be allowed to exploit children for profit, especially when it comes to these types of harmful and radical procedures.”

Jacob Asmussen

Jacob Asmussen is a Senior Journalist for Texas Scorecard. He attended the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and in 2017 earned a double major in public relations and piano performance.