Will Congress ever tackle transgender issues with more than partisan grandstanding? If Thursday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing is any indication, it’s not promising.

The hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, titled, “The Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care,’” addressed the two thorniest issues in the transgender debates: medical transitions for minors and transgender participation in women’s sports. Democrats dismissed the hearing out of the gate as “callous,” “reckless,” and a “bullying, bigoted framing of an issue.”

“This is a despicable hearing and a contemptible use of the subcommittee’s time and power,” Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement.

Six witnesses testified, four picked by Republicans and two by Democrats. Congressional questioning adhered almost exclusively to these partisan lines.

The Republicans’ witnesses included a trauma psychologist at the Family Research Council, Jennifer Bauwens; an attorney at the Independent Women’s Law Center, May Mailman; a 19-year-old detransitioner, Chloe Cole; and a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, Paula Scanlan, who was a teammate of controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and now works with the Independent Women’s Forum to oppose transgender participation in women’s sports.

Ms. Scanlan testified about the biological advantages Ms. Thomas, who was born a man, had in competing against natal females, and how she and her teammates lost spots on the podium and in qualifiers because Ms. Thomas dominated in competition. She also revealed that she is a sexual assault survivor and described the trauma of being “forced to undress in the presence of Lia, a

6-foot-4 biological male, fully intact with male genitalia, 18 times per week.”

Ms. Cole gave a heartbreaking testimony about her medical gender transition as a minor and the lasting medical and emotional scars she faces now that, as an adult, she’s reversed the sex change process and “detransitioned.” Ms. Cole was put on puberty blockers at age 12, followed by testosterone, and then a double mastectomy at age 15. A year later, she realized she wasn’t transgender and that she’d made a terrible mistake.

“I needed to be given therapy to help me work through my issues, not affirming my delusion that transforming into a boy … would solve all my problems,” Ms. Cole said. “I am making a desperate plea to my elected representatives: Learn the lessons from the other medical scandals like the opioid crisis to recognize that doctors are human too and sometimes they are wrong.”

The Democrats’ witnesses were a transgender legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Shannon Minter, and an art therapist and mother to a transgender son, Myriam Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds testified about the difficulties of helping her transgender son and the “lifesaving” gender-affirming care he received. Mr. Minter testified that “gender-affirming” care improves the lives of transgender youth and is endorsed by “every major medical association.”

“These standards are evidence-based,” Mr. Minter said. “Those standards have been in place for a long time. They are not new. What is new is this massive overreach by state lawmakers to ban medical care for transgender youth.”

The surge in the number of minors identifying as transgender has put the issue in the political spotlight. At least 20 states have recently enacted restrictions or all-out bans on gender-affirming care for minors. A federal judge in Arkansas struck down that state’s ban in June, and other suits against these bans are moving through the courts.

Ms. Bauwens, a psychologist, disputed Mr. Minter’s assessment, saying that 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria desist to their birth gender if given time and therapy. Ms. Cole expressed a similar sentiment when the Sun interviewed her in June, saying doctors ignored her underlying mental health issues, instead convincing her that medical transition would solve all her problems. It only exacerbated them.

There are no long-term, robust studies on detransition rates for minors who receive gender-affirming care, and the studies that do exist show widely varying numbers. Ms. Bauwens called for more rigorous studies and for the American Academy of Pediatrics to undergo a thorough assessment of the literature.

Mr. Minter, though, dismissed the risk of detransition, citing a 2022 Dutch study that found that 98 percent of minors who received cross-sex hormones continued with the treatments four years later. Mr. Minter called Ms. Cole “the exception, not the rule.”

“So she’s part of the two percent,” Mr. Nadler said dismissively.

Committee chairman, Mike Johnson, did not mince his words in describing his view of gender-affirming care. “This is the mutilation of children and it should be prohibited by our law,” he said. “No matter how liberated you may be, you still don’t have the legal right to ignore seatbelt safety laws or minimum driving age laws or drinking and smoking laws for your kids. No parent has a constitutional right to injure their children.”

Congresswoman Mary Scanlon, the ranking Democrat, shot back, calling the Republicans’ desire to interfere with parents’ and doctor’s decisions antithetical to a party that touts parental rights. “Congress has no business interfering with parents’ freedom to make decisions about appropriate medical care for their children,” she said. “Holding a hearing to substitute far right ideologies for parental judgment exposes the rank hypocrisy of the party claiming to value individual freedom and small government.”

One of the most heated exchanges addressed this politicization of the term “parental rights,” with each side claiming to hold the torch — so long as parents do what they want. A Republican congressman from California, Tom McClintock, cited his state’s Democratically passed “refuge” law for minors seeking transgender medical treatments, and the push in Democratic states to override parental authority in authorizing this care.

“It’s intrusions into the decisions of parents over the raising of their children, that needs to be very cautious, very limited, and very humble. Now, the ranking member in her opening statement makes this point, once you strip away all the partisan rhetoric,” Mr. McClintock said. “If both parties support a law that forbids performing these transgender procedures on a minor without the full and informed consent of the parents, then Mr. Chairman, I believe we should advance such a bill right away.”

Ms. Scanlon backtracked. “I think you are mischaracterizing that agreement,” she said.

Senator Vance has introduced legislation to ban gender-affirming care for minors. Several detransitioners have recently filed lawsuits against their doctors for providing gender-affirming medical care to them as minors. A handful of European countries, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, are restricting or banning medical transition care for minors. The issue is not going away.

On the floor of the House, though, there was little attempt at compromise. Democrats appealed to emotion, calling Republicans bigots who are hurting transgender youth and their families. Committee members from both sides of the aisle came into the room to ask their questions and then promptly left, some displaying as much knowledge of the issues as a room of geriatric Senators does discussing social media and tech.