Mounting Evidence Reveals Dangers in 'Gender Affirming Care' for Minors

UK and France the latest to move to put the brakes on gender affirming for teens and children

In early February of this year, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced new common sense policies for the treatment of gender confused children in her province. This included banning ‘top and bottom’ surgeries for minors and banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for gender reassignment purposes for children under the age of 15. What followed was a hysterical and over the top meltdown from the Trudeau Liberals, the NDP and all the usual suspects who have fervently embraced the extreme elements of gender ideology that has infected so much of society today. 

Federal Health Minister Mark Holland was ‘deeply disturbed’ by Smith’s policies calling them extremely dangerous and putting kids ‘at risk.’ Alberta’s NDP leader Rachel Notley also got into the act calling Smith’s policies, ‘dangerous and cruel’. Then there was the absurd reaction from Alberta MP and gay activist Randy Boissonnault calling it our ‘NATO moment’, likening it an international incident that required some type of military response.

Now since Smith made that announcement in the months that followed there have been a string of reports, studies and revelations in the news that support Smith’s policies and question the entire concept of ‘gender affirming care’ for children and adolescents. The latest comes from the United Kingdom, which last year ordered the closure of its Tavistock gender clinic for youths in London due to concerns over its treatments for gender confused minors, which has since resulted in mounting lawsuits.

Now the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has announced it is pausing all treatments for minors who appear to be suffering from gender dysphoria and plans to review all the transgender treatments it provides, not only to minors, but to adults as well. This comes on the heels of a more recent announcement that the NHS was banning the prescribing of puberty blockers to minors, because it believes there is currently not enough evidence of the effectiveness or safety to make them routinely available.

The decision to review the NHS’s current transgender treatments is the result of the recommendations and conclusions in a report prepared by Dr. Hilary Cass who was commissioned by NHS England to make recommendations toward ensuring that gender confused minors receive the highest standard of care possible. Dr. Cass is a pediatrician and former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and previously served as chief of the British Academy of Childhood Disability and senior clinical adviser for child health for Health Education England.

In her final report, The Cass Review, Dr. Cass maintains that gender medicine for children and young people is built on shaky grounds, and has come to the conclusion that:

“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”

She warns that children who change gender may regret it as they grow older, noting that many such children have experienced trauma, neglect and abuse. She actually advises that extreme care should be taken before transitioning anyone under the age of 25. She also called for an end to prescribing powerful hormone drugs to anyone under the age of 18.

The report also went on to say that the even social transitioning of children may cause them to experience psychological repercussions. Because, according to Dr. Cass, allowing a child to change their name and pronouns is not a neutral act, but a major intervention which opens the door to medical interventions which mark the beginning of the transition process. As such, she advises that prepubescent children should not be put on the same “pathway” as older adolescents who wish to identify as the opposite gender.

Dr. Cass also acknowledged the exceptional toxicity around the wider social debate on this topic, noting there are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views for fear they will be ostracized, ‘cancelled’ and vilified on social media. This was revealed in her interim report on the subject, where clinicians at the Tavistock Clinic said they felt under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach, which was at odds with the standard clinical assessment and diagnostic standards they had been trained to take with patients, for fear of being labelled transphobic. Families also felt pressured with parents feeling forced to allow their children to transition so they are not labelled transphobic.

Dr. Cass’s report echoes the same sentiments and concerns that other similar reviews and studies have found with respect to ‘gender affirming care’ for minors, although her recommendation that extreme care should be made in transitioning anyone under the age of 25 is a new precedent. It is, however, a reasonable one given that most studies now agree, that 25 is the age at which the human brain reaches full maturity. Her warnings about the social transitioning of children and her acknowledgement of the toxicity of the debate around transgenderism are also some new and salient points.  

Contrary to how our government leaders responded to Premier Smith’s policies which essentially mirror what Dr. Cass has said, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed her recommendations, highlighting the sharp rise in recent years in children, particularly adolescent girls, questioning their gender. He echoed Dr. Cass’s call for all cases to be treated with care and compassion, adding, “We simply do not know the long-term impacts of medical treatment or social transitioning on them, and we should therefore exercise extreme caution.”

The NHS announcement is, hopefully, just one more nail in the coffin of the madness of ‘woke’ doctors and psychologists blindly following the ‘gender affirming care’ model for the treatment of gender confused youths. Something that has been relentlessly pushed on society, the medical field, the educational field and various other institutions by trans activists. 

Another nail in that coffin is France, which has also recently announced plans to put the brakes on gender affirming care for minors through legislation. This comes from another detailed report on the subject which was initiated by ‘les Républicains’ senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio. It describes the excesses in child gender transitions as one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine. It points to numerous abuses by health professionals, including the practice of using puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgeries on minors, maintaining that these ‘professionals’ are nothing more than adherents to extreme trans-affirmative ideology. 

There was also an extensive study from Finland released in February of this year that found that gender dysphoria is not a significant cause of suicide in adolescents and that gender reassignment did not change the suicide risk of gender confused youths, thus extinguishing trans activist’s claim that if youth’s are denied gender affirming care they will kill themselves. 

In the United States the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) in February of this year, released its Position Statement on gender affirming care which was based on the review of some 60 studies on the subject. ACPeds maintains that there are no benefits from gender-affirming interventions for children or adolescents. It instead advises that families seek out psychotherapy to treat underlying conditions that may be related to the youth’s gender confusion.

In another bombshell revelation, in March of this year, files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) were leaked to investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger. The alarming contents of those files provided clear evidence that WPATH is not what it claims to be in terms of providing ‘evidence based’ standards of care for transgender people, which much of the western medical world follows. They further demonstrated that members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the life long of gender affirming care nor can they give informed consent to such treatments, yet they still proceed with treatments ranging from hormone therapy to irreversible sex change surgeries. Shellenberger believes, like the French senators, it could well be one of the greatest, if not the greatest medical mistreatment scandals in history, on par with the lobotomies and the Tuskegee experiments. 

AIso in February of this year Radio-Canada, (French CBC) aired a documentary film it had produced called, Trans Express which exposed how easy it is for youths to get prescriptions for cross-sex hormones, and have access to surgeries, such as mastectomies, with virtually no parental consultation or permission in Quebec. It followed the stories of two female youths who got caught up in the transgender craze, and produced to transition to male, but came to regret their decision and are in the process of detransitioning. 

All of these reports, reviews and revelations point to the fact that the science around the treatment of gender confused minors, and even adults for that matter, is not settled and is driven more by ideology, rather than medicine. It appears that European countries who got caught up in the transgender craze long before North America did are finally recognizing this. All of the Nordic countries have put the brakes on providing gender affirming care to minors, along with the Netherlands. Now it appears the UK and France are following suit. In the US a growing number of Republican run states are also doing so. So far in Canada only Premier Smith has taken steps to put restrictions on the medical aspects of gender affirming care for minors. The question is, when will other premiers follow suit. Better yet, when will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who clings so steadfastly to an ideology that is more politically driven than scientifically, wake up to this reality and admit he was wrong? Then we can put the final nails in the coffin of ‘gender affirming care’.

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