Major medical group expresses skepticism about sex-change surgeries for kids
A major medical organization in the United States has expressed skepticism about the long-term effects of body-mutilating sex-change procedures performed on minors.
In a thread posted to X Monday, Leor Sapir of the conservative think-tank The Manhattan Institute noted, “The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, an organization representing 92% of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., becomes the first major medical association to break from the consensus over ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors.”
The term gender-affirming care is a euphemism used to describe irreversible puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and elective surgical body disfigurement, such as castration for boys and double mastectomy and phalloplasty for girls that exhibit confusion about their sex.
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“In the U.S., the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to help kids who feel distressed about their developing bodies has depended on a perceived consensus of medical groups,” Sapir said.
“Critics argue that the consensus is manufactured and enforced through suppression of alternative viewpoints and of evidence reviews,” he added. “The [American Academy of Pediatrics], for instance, has suppressed member initiatives to get the group to conduct a systematic review of the evidence.”
Sapir cited “the consensus of medical associations” as “a chief reason for the growing divide between the U.S. and Europe, where countries have reversed course on youth gender medicine after finding the evidence too weak to support the routine use of Rx.”
Sapir noted that he reached out to The American Society of Plastic Surgeons seeking comment about the court documents showing that the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, identified as the “source of the U.S. consensus,” worked to suppress “systematic reviews of evidence and eliminated age minimums for surgery” due to pressure from trans-identified Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel [formerly Richard] Levine.
In response to Sapir’s inquiry, The American Society of Plastic Surgeons insisted that it had never endorsed WPATH’s “standards of care” and acknowledged the “low quality” of the use of the evidence surrounding the effectiveness of performing such drastic and irreversible "chest and genital" surgeries on minors. Sapir shared a screenshot of the email he received from The American Society of Plastic Surgeons in a subsequent post on X Tuesday. The email is dated July 23.
As Sapir suggested, leading medical organizations in the U.S. have consistently touted the claim that sex-change procedures are safe and effective despite concerns that have emerged about their irreversible effects. The American College of Pediatricians has emerged as an outlier with its views on the subject.
The American College of Pediatricians lists the potential side effects of puberty blockers prescribed to children as including “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.” The medical organization further warns that cross-sex hormones can cause “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers.”
Chloe Cole, a detransitioner who experienced gender dysphoria as a minor and was prescribed testosterone and underwent body-mutilating surgeries, asserted in a 2023 lawsuit that the double mastectomy she received as a teenager caused her to experience suicidal thoughts.
Cole, who's now an adult, once rejected her sex and self-identified as a male but saw her gender dysphoria subside as she got older. She maintains that the gender transition procedures she underwent left her with “deep physical and emotional wounds, severe regrets, and distrust of the medical system.”
Concerns about the effects of said procedures have motivated lawmakers in 26 states to ban some or all of them for minors. These states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in 14 other states have made their states havens for children seeking body-disfiguring procedures. These states include: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
While states have taken divergent actions on the legality of performing sex-change procedures on minors, the Biden administration remains supportive of making them available to children. This is a contrast to other countries like the United Kingdom, which has cracked down on so-called gender-affirming care following the publication of a 2022 report that called into question the effectiveness of such permanent and irreversible procedures on children.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
