By Michael Foust — Originally published in Christian Headlines
Critics of transgender treatment of children say the tide may be turning following a public backlash against the medical community.
This week the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics – an organisation that has supported medical treatment for trans-identifying minors – said that in most cases, children should not be given hormone therapy or the option of surgery.
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Moira Szilagyi, the AAP president, made the statement even as she supported what she called “gender-affirming care”.
“Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite,” Szilagyi wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Paul Hruz, a paediatric endocrinologist and a critic of giving minors hormones, called the statement significant.
“I do think that this is a shift. I think it’s a response to the criticism that’s occurring,” Szilagyi told CBN.
In the United Kingdom, a law firm this month announced a class-action lawsuit against the Tavistock gender identity clinic, which provided trans medical treatments to children but is facing criticism from former patients who say the clinic was too quick to rubber stamp the desires of often-fickle minors. The clinic has treated more than 19 000 children, according to the Independent newspaper.
The legal firm Pogust Goodhead is heading the lawsuit.
Tom Goodhead, chief executive of Pogust Goodhead, told the newspaper he expected at “least 1,000 clients will join this action.”
“These children have suffered life-changing and, in some cases, irreversible effects of the treatment they received, which has resulted in long-term physical and psychological consequences for them,” Goodhead said.
In the US, teens who have regrets about their medical treatments are speaking out. One of those, 17-year-old Chloe Cole, is urging state legislatures to place restrictions on transgender treatments for minors. Cole is a girl who formerly identified as a transgender boy. She had a mastectomy she now regrets.
“I really didn’t understand all of the ramifications of any of the medical decisions that I was making,” she said. “… I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully.”
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This is positive news, in the right direction, from a medical scientist – yet it harmonises with the gender-binary teaching of scripture.