Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley drew backlash for seemingly blaming rising suicide rates among teen girls on transgender girls using locker rooms.
Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, was asked about her definition of the term "woke" during a CNN town hall moderated by Jake Tapper and immediately went on a rant about transgender kids.
"There's a lot of things. You want to start with biological boys playing in girl sports. That's one thing. The fact we have gender pronoun classes in the military now. All these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans, it's too much," Haley said.
"The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls' sports, it is the women's issue of our time," she claimed. "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 room? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year."
A study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found an increase in suicide ideation and attempts among teenage girls between 2019 and 2021. But research from The Trevor Project found that transgender students are at the highest risk, with more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considering suicide in the past year.
"Trans teens statistically face heightened risks of suicide attempts," tweeted Politico's Sam Stein. "In the answer below, it is the attempted accommodation of them that is being pinpointed as a cause for contemplated suicide."
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"This is so incredibly dishonest, teenage girls aren't killing themselves because of girls sports. These people don't care about teenage girls, except if they can use them to beat up trans kids," tweeted columnist Molly Jong-Fast.
"Maybe it's because they see fascists taking away their rights every day, the existential climate crisis, the crushing student debt many will take on, and seeing kids get mowed down in their schools," wrote Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla.
"Nikki Haley suggesting that 1/3 of American teenage girls are contemplating suicide because of the existence of trans people is an unserious, untrue, and hateful thing to say. But hate is the point, isn't it?" added author Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg.
"Gun violence is the leading cause of death for kids and teens," noted author Keith Boykin. "School shootings have doubled in recent years. We just had 2+ years of Covid-related social disruption. And college has become unaffordable. Trans kids are not the problem. It's demagogic politicians like Nikki Haley."
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