MX — Ciudad de México. Deputies of the capital city of Mexico announced that they will ask the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City (CDHCM) to opine on local legislation intended to enable adolescent children to select their own name and biological sex.

Temístocles Villanueva, deputy of Morena in the district lX of Cuauhtémoc and president of the Human Rights Commission of the Congress of Mexico City (CDHDF), is the primary promoter of the proposed legislation, which would affect children in Mexico City.

The 30-year-old gay man and longtime LGBTI activist assured his transgender constituents that the purpose of the consultation with UNICEF will not be to open doors to pressure from groups that are against the legal and pharmaceutical “transition” of children. “It is just about broadening the debate, summoning the sectors and clearing up any doubts that exist around the proposal,” he said. Mr Villanueva is also fighting for a restroom initiative that will require “establishments to guarantee the accessibility” of public restrooms to transgender-identified people based on their self-selected sex.

The legal transition of children often sets healthy, but gender non-conforming children on a path to a lifelong regimen of medication and amputation.

The medical process usually begins with medications that block puberty in the child. Puberty blockers can lead to such side effects as permanent sterility, underdevelopment of genitalia and other sex characteristics, heart disease, blood clots, diabetes and poor bone health. Girls may be subjected to breast-binding, and boys to penis-tucking for the purpose of hiding these sex-specific traits.

When the youth come of age, they may be encouraged to undergo various amputative procedures, up to and including surgical removal of the breasts and uterus and ovaries, surgical castration of the testes, and surgical inversion of the penis. After amputation of these gonads, which naturally regulate hormones in humans, post-op transgender individuals must take hormone medications for life to decrease the risk of such health issues as osteoporosis in women and muscle weakness in men. Longterm use of hormone treatments may increase the risk of breast cancer in men transitioning to femininity, and polycystic ovary syndrome and endometrial hyperplasia in women transitioning to masculinity.

A study conducted in the United Kingdom concluded that gender-affirming surgeries do not lower rates of severe distress or suicidal ideation in gender non-conforming individuals. A larger, more longterm study of post-op transsexuals in Sweden found that “male-to-females are at higher risk for suicide attempts after sex reassignment.”

The consultation with UNICEF is expected to take place before next December, which will mark the end of the current session. According to the UNICEF website, the agency “works in over 190 countries and territories to protect the rights of every child.”