From the threat of infanticide to assisted-suicide, the fight for life currently dominates conversation among pro-family activists in the Commonwealth. With our attention rightly fixated on pro-life issues, however, some may have missed an important new development in the effort to preserve the meaning of male and female.

Just one state over, three high school girls from Connecticut filed a discrimination complaint last month after two biological males came first and second in a recent track meet, costing one of the girls tournament-qualifying spots and college scholarships. Alliance Defending Freedom, who represents the three girls filing the complaint, highlighted the inequity between their clients and the transgender athletes: “one of these male athletes now holds 10 records inside the State of Connecticut that were once held by 10 individual girls and were established over the course of about a 20 year period.”

Sadly, this case is one of many. In 2018, Rachel McKinnon, a biological man, became the first transgender athlete to win a track world title. JayCee Cooper, a transgender “woman” from Minnesota, forced USA Powerlifting to ban men from competing as women after Cooper destroyed the bench press record. Brazilian superstar volleyball player Tiffany Abreu, born a male, is likely to secure a 2020 Olympic spot on Brazil’s women’s national team.

The International Olympic Committee and the NCAA rushed to showcase their “inclusiveness” by allowing transgender
males to compete in women’s sports – the only requirement for admission: maintaining a suppressed level of testosterone. Even with limited testosterone, however, men are born with a greater average height and weight, a larger lung capacity, and a higher max. heart rate, all of which provide a distinct athletic advantage. Allowing male-born individuals to participate in organized women’s games essentially nullifies the entire concept of women’s sports. 

Transgender athlete at Cromwell High School in Connecticut speaks with track coach

The physical advantage men enjoy, even with testosterone suppressors, is a biological fact. For a community founded on the pillar of fairness (sportsmanship), sport’s world leaders currently endorse fundamentally unfair, anti-woman policies that blatantly reject well-documented science and deny women hard-earned opportunities.

To combat this attack against women athletes, we must follow the example of these brave Connecticut student athletes and pursue legal action. Young women in Massachusetts have already contacted MFI after losing roster spots to “transgender” athletes, but these individuals are (reasonably) afraid to proceed out of fear of persecution. If we do nothing though, countless other girls will be similarly hurt by these policies. We must take a stand. MFI is willing to stand with women and girls who experience this issue, both in our prayers and in the courtroom.