CDC now giving tips for trans people who want to breastfeed

Karol Markowicz

Opinion

By Karol Markowicz

July 6, 2023 | 10:36pm

When do we stop pretending that men can simply become women and women can be men?

How much longer can we let this mass mania go on? 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last seen making toddlers mask for a virus that barely affected them — using masks that didn’t prevent exposure — now has suggestions for trans men and women who want to breastfeed. 

I’m sorry, did I say breastfeed?

How 2021 of me. 

The term is now “chestfeed,” because why would we assume that the person doing the feeding has breasts?

So old-fashioned. 

The CDC advice isn’t just for biological women who have removed their breasts but still want to nurse babies, it’s also for biological men, who through the magic of plastic surgery also have breasts and would now like to use these breasts to feed babies. 

As that’s biologically impossible, the CDC suggests getting help with “maximizing milk production, supplementing with pasteurized donor human milk or formula, medication to induce lactation.” 

A 2022 CDC note specified “an individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed.” 

Chesting up 

Apparently, biological men can force their bodies to produce breastmilk (chestmilk?) via hormone drugs. 

One of the drugs that has been used for this purpose has an FDA warning against it because, surprise, it can have negative effects on a baby’s heart. 

This method of forcing lactation is called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol and has been traditionally used by women who adopted babies and still wanted to nurse them. 

Various doctors have weighed in on the idea of men producing milk, with Dr. Stuart Fischer, an internal medicine doctor in New York, stating the obvious: The idea that “breast milk produced by trans women is comparable to breastmilk made by biological women is ‘very hard to believe.’ ” 

There are very few studies on this method, especially when used by biological males. 

We don’t know what the impact will be on babies, if that’s even still the term for them, or on the biological male forcing lactation. 

We used to care about things like studies or research, but now the CDC just throws things at the wall and sees what sticks. 

For those of us who tried to be accommodating, who always considered ourselves pro-LGBT, who used preferred pronouns right up until they became plural or completely made up, this is all galling. 

We were on board for equality, not to deny basic biology. 

It feels like we’re in the upside-down where to be an ally means we have to pretend that biology has ceased to exist. 

It’s bad enough that the left has tried to rearrange our language, get rid of terms like “woman” or “breast,” to accommodate a miniscule segment of the population that may not actually be offended by the terminology at all. 

It’s worse that we’re now supposed to pretend that a biological male can breast/chest/whatever feed a baby and that this is normal and acceptable. It’s not. 

That our health agencies pretend otherwise is yet more evidence that the CDC has become entirely politicized with health care being a diminishing priority. 

Health care requires facts not fiction. 

It’s not too much to expect for the CDC to recognize that.

Twitter: @Karol