Nikki Haley suggests teenage girls are committing suicide because of trans classmates

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, one of a handful of Republicans running for president in 2024, suggested during a CNN town hall Sunday night that transgender kids are to blame for an uptick in suicidal ideation in teenage girls.

Haley made the comment in response to a question from host Jake Tapper, who asked Haley to define the word “woke.” Haley and other Republican presidential contenders have made “anti-woke” policies a cornerstone of their campaigns.

Haley replied:

There’s a lot of things. I mean, you want to start with biological boys playing in girl sports. That’s one thing. The fact that we have gender pronoun classes in the military now, I mean, all of these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans, it’s too much. It’s too much. I mean, the idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time. My daughter ran track in high school. I don’t even know how I would have that conversation with her. How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year. We should be growing strong girls, confident girls.

Jack Turban, a child psychiatrist who specializes in mental health care for transgender youth said Haley’s comments are false.

“Hi @NikkiHaley. I’m a child psychiatrist. Trans kids playing sports is not the reason we’re seeing high rates of suicidality among youth. In fact, most kids couldn’t care less,” he tweeted.

A February 2023 report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that suicidal ideation is high due to isolation during the pandemic, social media, and bullying.

What’s more, that same report found that LGBTQ youth are more likely to experience suicidal ideation than non-LGBTQ youth.

“Close to 70% of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and more than 50% had poor mental health during the past 30 days. Almost 25% attempted suicide during the past year,” the report said.

The Republican Party has increased its targeting of the transgender community over the past year, passing laws banning transgender girls from girls’ sports and outlawing gender-affirming care for minors.

Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has vowed to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports and prohibit federal funding of gender-affirming care.

“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump said in February, according to The Hill. “Under my leadership, this madness will end.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who officially launched his presidential bid in May, signed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors, criminalizing transgender people who use bathrooms that don’t align with their gender assigned at birth, and blocking public school employees from sharing their pronouns or asking students what pronouns they prefer to use.

“There’s a lot of nonsense that gets floated around,” DeSantis said in May at an event at a Christian private school in Tampa. “What we’ve said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy. Kids should have an upbringing that reflects that.”

Experts say Republicans are targeting the transgender community in an effort to energize the GOP base to vote, after issues they’d previously relied on, such as same-sex marriage, lost salience.

“It’s staggering how quickly [marriage] disappeared as an issue,” Dartmouth University professor Randall Balmer, who studies the religious right, told The 19th. “And so, they almost frantically began looking for something else. And of course, the trans thing was the next thing on the horizon.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.