Megyn Kelly spoke with talk show host and comedian Bill Maher about political hot topics on Friday, including fascism and gender-affirming care for transgender kids, with their exchange on the latter circulating in a video clip on X, formerly Twitter.
Pivoting from a discussion about global fascism and what a second potential Donald Trump presidency might look like, Kelly, a former Fox News host, said on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher that “almost equally as important, maybe as important, is what we’re doing to our children with this trans insanity. This is almost my single issue. We are chopping off the healthy body parts of young children—100 percent we are doing that.” Audience members can then be heard reacting to Kelly’s comment.
Maher responded, “We are definitely doing that. That’s what it is. I don’t know what the ooing is about.”
A video segment of Kelly and Maher’s exchange shared by Eric Abbenante, a filmmaker and comedian, has received upwards of 3.8 million views on X as of Saturday afternoon.
Gender affirming care has become a contentious political topic, with over half of the states in the country having enacted laws and policies that limit youth access.
Republicans have long touted that bans on gender-affirming care would protect children from making harmful lifetime decisions before they’re capable of deciding whether they want to fully transition. Meanwhile, those in favor of gender-affirming care say that preventing access to these services can cause long term suffering and mental health problems for children and teens who aren’t able to live in a body that feels like their own.
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey published earlier this month, found that in 2023, 3.3 percent of U.S. high school students identified as transgender and 2.2 percent identified as questioning.
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A study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published in June, found gender affirming surgeries in minors—referring to the topic raised by Kelly—are rare.
Using data from 2019, the study reported no gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youths aged 12 and under. Among teens ages 15 to 17, the rate was 2.1 per 100,000, and 5.3 per 100,000 for adults 18 and older.
Most youth gender-affirming care is non-surgical, and can include counseling, hormone therapy, and puberty blockers. According to the Mayo Clinic, puberty blockers “don’t cause permanent physical changes. Instead, they pause puberty,” noting that when a person stops taking the blockers, “puberty starts again.”
“Kids who are suffering from bullying or who have been sexually assaulted or who are going through normal puberty and feel uncomfortable in their bodies will say to their parents, ‘I’m not sure, maybe I’m gender confused.’ They will send them in to a psychiatrist or psychologist who are told by our organizations, the American Psychiatry Association and all the others that run their licensing, you must affirm, affirm is the only standard,” Kelly said on Friday.
The former Fox News host added that “the child gets put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones which sterilize a child.”
Cross-sex hormones, which differ from puberty blockers, are typically testosterone and estrogen and can be used to change the body.
Newsweek reached out to the American Psychiatry Association (APA) for comment via email on Saturday.
According to the APA’s website, there are several domains of affirmation, defining the options of treatment for medical affirmation as “pubertal suppression for adolescents with gender dysphoria and gender-affirming hormones like estrogen and testosterone for older adolescents and adults. Medical affirmation is not recommended for prepubertal children. Some adults (and less often adolescents) may undergo various aspects of surgical affirmation.”
Later in the discussion, Maher asked Kelly if she agrees and understands that there are people who are transgender, to which Kelly clarified: “I have some [transgender people] in my family. I have nothing against people who actually have gender dysphoria and are sincerely wrestling with that…this is a different issue; this is about children and then it’s about women’s spaces in sports.”
Kelly has been outspoken both on her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, and on social media, that transgender women competing in female leagues create an unfair advantage against biological girls and women and should not be allowed
Proponents of allowing transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity argue that sports should be inclusive and accessible to all, regardless of gender identity, emphasizing the importance of equality and non-discrimination, pointing out that transgender athletes often face significant barriers in sports, including societal stigma and discrimination.
