OPINION:
It’s clear that the public is increasingly rejecting the transgender fiction that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
The medical community itself is undergoing a retrenchment over its rush to embrace transgender treatments for minors. These include cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries to cut off healthy breasts and male genitals.
On Feb. 3, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released new guidelines recommending against irreversible procedures such as mastectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy or orchiectomy on minors younger than 19.
Conversely, the largest doctor’s guild, the American Medical Association, still officially opposes any bans or restrictions on “gender-affirming care” for minors.
Even more egregious, the American Academy of Pediatrics stands by its 2018 declaration: “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary for many youth with gender dysphoria and is associated with positive mental health outcomes when provided appropriately.”
Talk about the fox guarding the chicks.
Part of the plastic surgeons’ change of heart may be a result of growing substantiation of harm plus a lack of evidence of benefits, as revealed in Britain’s voluminous Cass Report, released in April 2024. Many European nations, including Britain, have done an about-face on treatments for minors.
Then there are the detransitioners. These are people who have gone through sex change treatments, regret it and are trying to recover their God-given sexuality. Two of them, Chloe Cole and Walt Heyer, have been making an outstanding public case against “gender-affirming care.”
Soren Aldaco, 23, who was given cross-sex hormones at 17 and underwent a double mastectomy at age 19, is suing her Texas medical providers. In a Feb. 12 Wall Street Journal column, she wrote that her surgeon was “spoon-feeding me talking points for insurance coverage” and that she was on 10 medications at the time of the procedure. Afterward, she “suffered major complications” and “the realization that I had been gaslit.”
On Jan. 30, a New York jury issued a $2 million medical malpractice award to Fox Varian, a 22-year-old woman who had sued her former psychologist and plastic surgeon over the double mastectomy she got in 2019 when she was 16. The jury allocated her $1.6 million for past and future pain and suffering, plus $400,000 for future medical expenses.
Medical costs are an important incentive for the transgender racket. Patients need constant care and drugs for the rest of their lives to manage the unnatural alteration of their bodies. If this looks like a medical conflict of interest, well, the shoe fits.
Research shows that the vast majority — 80% to 90% — of sexually dysphoric young people recover their biologically determined sexual identity by the time they turn 21. That is, they do if they aren’t hijacked by a movement intent on defeating biology.
Recent surveys have shown an enormous upsurge in teens identifying as LGBTQ and girls, in particular, embracing transgenderism. Writer Abigail Shrier calls the trend a “social contagion.” In 2018, Dr. Lisa Littman coined “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to describe the phenomenon.
Teens are undergoing enormous peer pressure, magnified by social media and government school propaganda, to identify as anything but “normal” or “straight.”
I don’t doubt that many people, including parents who are being misled by medical professionals into giving their consent, have good intentions. Many honestly believe treatments are necessary. Some are being bullied by practitioners who tell them their dysphoric child might otherwise commit suicide.
Meanwhile, people trying to alert the public to this scam are accused of “transphobia” and lacking compassion.
Democratic-run states have effectively criminalized “conversion therapy” unless it is aimed at pushing minors into LGBTQ behavior, not away from it. Conversely, Republican-run states have laws prohibiting sex change treatments on minors, and President Trump issued an executive order to that effect. Yes, elections matter.
A doctor told me that he thinks the transgender experiment is over because of the growing number of malpractice lawsuits. That’s great, but I wonder whether there is room for some justice too. The quacks who pushed this on hapless teens should lose their licenses at the very least and face criminal charges if possible.
Here is some perspective. After World War II, the victorious allies held the Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi officials were convicted of heinous war crimes, including the Holocaust.
One of the first groups on trial consisted of doctors who had performed sadistic experiments in concentration camps, including sexual surgeries.
“The sterilization experiments included castration by surgery, X-ray sterilization, and the administration of sterilizing drugs,” according to the judgment of the tribunal’s final verdict issued in August 1947. “These procedures were performed without the consent of the subjects, many of whom were minors or adolescents.”
Polish and Jewish survivors testified about teen girls undergoing ovariectomy (removal of ovaries) or irradiation of reproductive organs, and teen boys being castrated.
Out of this trial, a modern medical ethics doctrine emerged, the heart of which bars any treatments without meaningful consent.
Here’s the thing. Minors can never give meaningful consent to life-altering treatments such as sex changes, and these heinous procedures should never be done, regardless of consent by parents and guardians.
Some things, such as drugging children and messing with their healthy body parts, is wrong no matter who says it’s OK.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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