Colorado voters this November can ban permanent sex-change surgeries on minors and lock biological males out of girls' sports — two measures the medical-industrial complex has no incentive to support and every financial reason to oppose.
Proposition 134, the Protect Women and Girls Sports Act, reserves K-12 and collegiate female sports for biological females. Individuals who identify as something other than their sex could still play on coed teams or the team matching their sex. Proposition 135 bars life-altering gender surgeries — chest, facial, genital — for anyone under 18. Cross-sex hormones, with their documented metabolic, liver, bone, fertility, and cardiovascular risks, would remain legal; the proposition targets only what cannot be undone.
The Denver Post's Krista Kafer, backing both measures, framed the stakes plainly: males outpace females in running records, carry heavier bone and muscle mass, and their presence in female sports costs girls opportunities to compete, win, and earn scholarships. She also cited safety and privacy concerns when males share female locker rooms and overnight accommodations.
The case for Prop 134 is not hypothetical. The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights already found Jefferson County school district out of compliance with Title IX for allowing male students into girls' sports and female bathrooms, locker rooms, and overnight rooms, according to Fox News reporting cited by Kafer. In Camas, Washington, nearly a dozen high school cross-country girls walked off rather than race a runner who began the season on the boys' team. Twenty-seven states already protect girls' sports; Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington vote on joining them this fall.
Prop 135 aligns Colorado with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which recommends gender-related surgeries not be performed before age 19. Kafer noted that while cross-sex hormones carry serious risks, they can be discontinued. Surgery cannot be reversed.
Follow the money: the clinics billing for these procedures face real liability when patients detransition. Fox Varian, who received a double mastectomy at 16 and now identifies as her biological sex, won a $2 million lawsuit — $1.6 million for pain and suffering, $400,000 for future medical expenses. She will always bear the scars. A rising number of detransitioners say they were too young to consent. The medical personnel who operated on them are now the ones who would be shielded by an age limit — or exposed without one.
No outlet covering this race has yet reported which clinics or medical associations are funding the opposition to these propositions. That gap matters. When the people profiting from a practice are also lobbying to keep it legal, voters deserve to see the receipts.
The open question: will Colorado's media name the industry fighting these measures — or just look the other way while the clinics cash in?
