Officials for the American College of Pediatricians concluded last week that purported “gender affirming” procedures do not have any benefit for the mental wellness of children.
Authors for a new position statement reviewed more than sixty studies and concluded that “social transition, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones have no demonstrable, long-term benefit on psychosocial well-being of adolescents with gender dysphoria.” American College of Pediatricians President Michael Artigues said that “young patients experiencing gender dysphoria deserve help in accepting and loving themselves as they are, not interventions that destroy their healthy bodies and put them on track of medicalization for life.”
Physicians launched the American College of Pediatricians more than two decades ago over frustration with the American Association of Pediatrics, a group which releases activist statements framed as accurately representing the stances of all professionals in the field.
The position statement also noted that the number of adolescents calling themselves “transgender” has increased significantly in only a few years, a term that the American College of Pediatricians called “misleading” because individual sex is “immutable from the moment of fertilization” regardless of hormonal and surgical interventions. They added that parents, physicians, and educators who support the purported “transition” of a child are only validating the incorrect notion that “something is wrong with their body and biological sex.”
Young people who identify as “sexual minorities” are also three times more likely to attempt suicide relative to those who do not call themselves “sexual minorities,” with those identifying as “transgender” experiencing the greatest suicide risk. The authors of the statement debunked a study from the University of Washington often cited to support “transitions” on the grounds that “socially transitioned transgender children who are supported in their gender identity have developmentally normative levels of depression and only minimal elevations in anxiety,” since researchers who reexamined the data found that there were “significantly and substantively meaningful differences in anxiety and self-worth” even when parents supported the “transition.”
The position statement meanwhile questioned the validity of studies on regret from transgender procedures because many patients are lost to follow-up processes, adult patients who “transitioned in the past are quite different from adolescents transitioning today,” and the term “regret” is narrowly defined in some studies as “those who return to the same gender clinic to begin medical detransition.” They noted that a medical treatment course of “watchful waiting” will see between 80% and 90% of adolescents with gender dysphoria continue under their sex as they walk through “the natural course of puberty with the accompanying hormonal surges.”
The statement from the American College of Pediatricians comes as an increasing number of states implement bans on hormones and surgeries for “transitions” on minors. Ohio lawmakers voted to override a veto last month on a measure that will prohibit the procedures.
Leaders in the Democratic Party and officials in the Biden administration nevertheless continue to affirm the notion that such procedures are beneficial for the physical and mental health of children. The White House hosted a “Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids” last year to mark “Transgender Day of Visibility,” noting that President Joe Biden is the “the first President in history to discuss the importance of expanding equality and combating attacks on the rights of transgender Americans in every State of the Union or joint session of Congress address.”
