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Gender-Dysphoric Children Protected from “Gender-Affirming Care”

The American medical establishment is increasingly the fringe advocate on this issue
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This article is reprinted from National Review with the permission of the author.

The execrable gender ideologue Admiral Rachel Levine is no longer in government. That’s great news in the long run for children with gender dysphoria, because the new administration wants to actually protect these disturbed minors. Accordingly, President Trump today signed an executive order protecting such children from being subjected to often irreparable body-altering “gender-affirming care.” From the order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation:”

Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.

Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

Excellent.

Trump also closed the federal money spigot:

Defunding Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. The head of each executive department or agency (agency) that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, shall, consistent with applicable law and in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.

Of course, the usual suspects continue to pretend that the justification for so-called gender-affirming care is not crumbling under the assault of data demonstrating that the evidence for benefit is minimal but the dangers pronounced. For example, the AP reported on the executive order in a typically one-sided account:

The language in the executive order — using words such as “maiming,” “sterilizing” and “mutilation” — contradicts what is typical for gender-affirming care in the United States. It also labels guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “junk science.” Major medical groups such as the American Medical Association support access to the care.

Waddya know, the reporters somehow forgot to even mention that the president’s action is consistent with recent actions taken by socially liberal countries such as the U.K., Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, France, and New Zealand.

Moreover, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, less a medical organization and more a gaggle of gender ideologues, has been discredited. And the American medical establishment is increasingly the fringe advocate on this issue. But the AP doesn’t report on any of that. The news organization is all yesterday’s news, akin to a million-year-old mosquito stuck in amber.

More than that, gender-dysphoric minors have been physically harmed by such interventions, including mastectomies, puberty blockers, hormone injections, facial reconstruction surgeries, and, in a few cases, even genital removal.

So, let the gender ideologues and clueless mainstream media howl. Trump did the right and humane thing.


Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

Gender-Dysphoric Children Protected from “Gender-Affirming Care”