Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey says his experience as a prosecutor of child abuse and as a foster father fuel his resolve to end gender “experimentation” on children.
Missouri’s top law enforcement officer told The Daily Signal about his litigation and investigations related to transgender surgeries and hormone therapy for minors.
Missouri media have dishonestly covered his efforts “in a negative light,” Bailey said in an interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday.
“Their narrative is that this is, you know, a ‘social justice’ issue, and child mutilation is not a social justice issue,” Bailey told The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan. “Protecting kids is a social justice issue.”
Bailey, a Republican, added: “This is personal for me,” alluding to his efforts prosecuting child abuse cases in adult and juvenile courts as well as to his own family life.
“My wife and I are foster parents [and] have adopted kids … and again, I’ve dedicated my personal and professional life to protecting children, and this issue really strikes a chord with me,” the state attorney general told Olohan.
Repeating a promise he has made in the past, Bailey declared, “I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children.”
He recalled how the whistleblower files of Jamie Reed, a former employee at a pediatric gender clinic in St. Louis, opened his eyes to “a horror story of gender mutilation, of child abuse.” State investigations that followed showed “a shadowy and clandestine network” of such clinics around Missouri.
Bailey said his office continues to review whistleblower tips on transgender matters and that he’s “proud” to have defended in court Missouri’s law banning child sex changes.
“This is woke, left-wing experimentation, and we can’t let it happen to our kids,” he said.
