By Lori Gimelshteyn | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Just a few years ago, parents were assured that “gender-affirming care” was lifesaving, compassionate, and backed by science. Affirmation, puberty blockers, hormones, and ultimately surgery were sold as the only path forward for a child questioning whether they were “born in the wrong body.”
But the cracks in this narrative are widening—and behind them lies a deeply troubling truth: children have been swept into a medical experiment that ignores mental health, underlying trauma, and long-term consequences.
Families across Colorado have shared heartbreaking stories of what happened when they trusted this system.
Many parents believed they were doing the right thing—only to realize that the affirmative model overlooked autism, anxiety, depression, past trauma and alarmingly, social influence.
In too many cases, medical professionals fast-tracked children onto cross-sex hormones after just one or two visits, sometimes without full mental health evaluations, second opinions, or real informed consent.
Now, many of those same families say their greatest regret was ever walking through the doors of the gender clinics at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Denver Health, and Kaiser Permanente.
They weren’t warned about the irreversible outcomes—bone loss, chronic pain, infertility, sexual dysfunction, and surgeries that failed to deliver the promised peace or resolution. Instead of healing, their children were handed lifelong medical burdens.
And yet, while European nations like Sweden, Finland, and the UK have paused or reversed their support for gender medical interventions on minors—citing serious risks and lack of evidence. Meanwhile, Colorado lawmakers are doubling down.
House Bill 25-1312, deceptively titled “Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals,” does the opposite of protecting. It allows the state to treat a parent’s refusal to affirm a child’s declared gender identity as “coercive control.”
That means calling your daughter by the name you gave her at birth—or even raising concerns about irreversible treatment—could be used against you in custody court or by Child Protective Services.
Let that sink in: Loving, engaged parents could lose custody of their own children for not complying with state-imposed ideology.
Supporters of this bill argue that anything short of full affirmation is abuse.
But that’s not true—and it’s not science. The real abuse is rushing vulnerable children into irreversible treatments without addressing what’s beneath their distress – or evaluating external influences that may pressure children into declaring a new gender identity.
It’s silencing dissent and criminalizing caution.
This isn’t a fringe concern. It’s a moral, medical, and constitutional crisis.
Coloradans must wake up to what’s happening—not just in headlines or committee hearings, but in their own communities.
Families are being torn apart. Children are being medicalized for life. And if we don’t speak up now, bills like HB25-1312 will make it nearly impossible to speak up later.
It’s time to ask who’s really writing these laws—and what they truly stand for.
One of the bill’s lead sponsors, Representative Lorena Garcia, who represents parts of Adams and Jefferson counties, is an admitted member of the Democratic Socialists of America —a political group that openly advocates for dismantling traditional American institutions, including the nuclear family.
This isn’t the Democratic Party of decades past.
This is a movement of radical activists pushing state control over parental rights.
Coloradans deserve to know exactly who is behind this agenda—and how far they’re willing to go to silence dissent and reshape the role of parents in their own children’s lives.
If we stay silent while lawmakers rush to codify this model into law, we will lose more than parental rights—we will lose generations of children to an ideology that punishes anyone who dares to say “Wait.”
Lori Gimelshteyn, M.S., CCC-SLP, is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN), one of the state’s leading grassroots organizations defending the fundamental right of parents to direct the care, education, and upbringing of their children. With two decades of experience as a speech-language pathologist, she brings clinical insight and constitutional conviction to her advocacy. Under her leadership, CPAN has become a statewide force for educational freedom, academic excellence, and institutional accountability. Her work has been featured in national outlets including Fox News, The Federalist, The Daily Wire and The Denver Gazette. Lori’s vision is bold and unwavering: a future where truth, accountability, and parental authority shape every system that touches a child’s life. She continues to lead with clarity, courage, and conviction to make that vision a reality for the next generation. Lori can be reached at [email protected] or by text/call at 970-886-0888.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.