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Proclaiming Life: That No More Generations May Be Lost

January 24, 2025/in Abortion, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Immigration, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

This Wednesday, January 22, 2025, is the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Less than three years ago, a changed court reversed the abortion decisions in the Dobbs case. On the ground, however, the toll of abortion in the United States remains high, fueled by unlimited abortion in a number of states and an evolution in abortion procedures via the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone with few health standards and requirements, as prescribed by the U.S Food and Drug Administration.

January 22 is also just the third day of the second administration of Donald J. Trump. President Trump enters office in a somewhat different posture from that of his first term in 2017. The president’s stance on abortion is considerably different from what it was eight years ago, with his stated pledge to veto any federal ban on abortion, opposition to the most protective pro-life laws in the states, and avowed intention not to alter the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill.

There remain, however, a number of actions that Congress and the president can take to reinstate pro-life policies from his first term, particularly on domestic and international abortion funding, conscience rights for pro-life doctors and entities, child tax credits, and funding for the massive abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

What might this week bring in terms of administration statements on abortion? What does history tell us about the expressed convictions of avowedly pro-life presidents, of whom we have had four from 1981 to the present? A quick scan of the dozens of executive orders issued by President Trump so far shows a few that may have pro-life implications, particularly the 90-day pause in foreign assistance to permit a review of their consistency with America First goals. A second action with pro-life import is the announced withdrawal of the United States from the thoroughly pro-abortion World Health Organization, whose actions hostile to human life have been described in a prior article in this space.

President Trump has repeatedly said in the past few days that more actions are coming. Given that this week brings both the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the national March for Life (January 24), what else might the new administration do to highlight its position on the sanctity of human life? In addition to policy steps, the traditional means for these expressions include attendance by the president or senior administration officials at pro-life events or, more commonly, the issuance of a Presidential Proclamation declaring National Sanctity of Human Life Day. The latter form of support for a pro-life nation has been consistent since the practice was initiated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

So what is a presidential proclamation? These documents are signed by the president and can be issued at any time during the year, usually to commemorate a particular observance. They are typically done at the request of one or both houses of Congress, which adopt a resolution urging the president to recognize a special period.

Some proclamations are annual and others are one-off occasions, owing to the unique nature of the observance or the natural limit on proclamations — which is to say, the White House typically prefers not to dilute these commemoratives by issuing them on multiple topics day after day (the average number of proclamations issued for the past three decades is 143 per year). Proclamations can honor such observances as National Down Syndrome Awareness Month or less weighty matters such as National Ice Cream Month and National Ice Cream Day (in July, naturally).

In contrast, the Presidential Proclamations for National Sanctity of Human Life Day have a far more substantive history. First, of course, the proclamations are not lawmaking or policy-setting. They are vision statements, setting forth the principles that guide a president’s actions, from executive orders, to policy memoranda, to legislative proposals, to presidential personnel, and more.

Since 1984, when the first presidential proclamation on abortion was issued by Ronald Reagan, there has been a total of 22 such proclamations issued by four chief executives: Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump. The issuances have been remarkably consistent. Each Republican president has issued an annual proclamation covering his four or eight years in office. No Democratic president has ever issued one. Because they are not policy documents per se (though they may express a view), the proclamations are not rescinded by subsequent presidents but remain as persuasive documents of a hortatory character.

The first National Sanctity of Human Life Proclamation was promulgated on January 13, 1984, and it designated January 22, 1984, the 11th anniversary of Roe, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Unlike most presidential proclamations, this one was not requested by congressional resolution. Rather, the idea was originated by the Rev. Curtis J. Young, at that time the executive director of the Christian Action Council (CAC), the forerunner of Care Net, one of the largest pregnancy center networks in the United States. Young led the establishment of scores of pregnancy centers and is the author of “The Least of These: What Everyone Should Know About Abortion,” one of the first books to make the compelling case for life from a biblical, moral, and social perspective. The CAC was in its first years a policy and communications group, founded by a coalition of distinguished evangelical leaders such as the Rev. Billy Graham, C. Everett Koop, and Harold O.J. Brown. That first date for the observance fell on a Sunday and one goal was to foster recollection, prayer, and action within the churches about the value of every human life.

Now, 41 years later, this tradition of presidential proclamations continues to serve a high purpose. Each of the four presidents who have followed the tradition has had a distinct style, but there is much in common among the documents. President Reagan’s first proclamation, No. 5147, went directly to the nation’s founding document: “The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life. The first of the ‘unalienable rights’ affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings — whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped.” As has become standard in the proclamations, Reagan called “upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life, and to reaffirm our commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of each human life.”

Reagan issued a similar proclamation each of the following five years of his presidency, hailing the new achievements in perinatal care, praising abortion alternatives, and calling for legal protections at every level of government for the unborn. His 1988 Proclamation, the second to last of his time in office, was particularly notable. Tracking the language of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Reagan’s text came to be called a “proclamation of personhood” for the unborn. He wrote:

“Our Nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice. This sacred legacy, and the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land. In legislation introduced at my request in the First Session of the 100th Congress, I have asked the Legislative branch to declare the ‘humanity of the unborn child and the compelling interest of the several states to protect the life of each person before birth.’ This duty to declare on so fundamental a matter falls to the Executive as well. By this Proclamation I hereby do so.”

The next four proclamations were issued by George H. W. Bush, and they evince a similar spirit. In his 1990 proclamation, President Bush hailed our nation’s spectrum of concern to preserve and protect vulnerable lives, whatever the threat. He championed the scientists and physicians providing care and seeking cures, promoted adoption, and cited the Declaration. He wrote: “On this day, we also thank God for the advances in medicine that have improved the care of unborn children in the womb and premature babies. These scientific advances reinforce the belief that unborn children are persons, entitled to medical care and legal protection.”

The next presidential elections brought the Clinton years and pitched battles over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Winning the fight for this limit on a particularly grotesque form of abortion, that destroys a living baby by crushing its skull and vacuuming out its brains, fell to President Bush’s son, George W. Bush. In the last of his eight annual proclamations on National Sanctity of Human Life Day, the younger Bush recited his considerable accomplishments in signing into law the ban on partial-birth abortions, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act protecting the right to life of the child in the womb, and the original Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

He wrote in the proclamation’s first words: “All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.”

President Trump sustained these commitments in his Proclamations on National Sanctity of Human Life Day from 2018 to 2021. He called on Congress to act to limit late-term abortion and poetically ended his proclamation stating: “Today, I call on the Congress to join me in protecting and defending the dignity of every human life, including those not yet born. I call on the American people to continue to care for women in unexpected pregnancies and to support adoption and foster care in a more meaningful way, so every child can have a loving home. And finally, I ask every citizen of this great Nation to listen to the sound of silence caused by a generation lost to us, and then to raise their voices for all affected by abortion, both seen and unseen.”

With these beautiful words, the tradition of presidential proclamations on behalf of life has reached a new shore of opportunity, one in which we can move toward a golden age of protection for our young.

Here are links to all 22 of these statements of principle: 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

AUTHOR

Chuck Donovan

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Pardons Pro-Lifers Ahead Of March For Life

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Could Scrap Biden’s Trans Troops Policy ‘as Soon as Day One’

November 27, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Marxism, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Queers and pedophiles, Regulation, Religion, Social Issues, Socialism/by Family Research Council

While there aren’t a lot of familiar faces from Donald Trump’s first term, Americans are hoping there will be some familiar policies. From the border wall to tax cuts, voters have made it clear that the last thing they want is a continuation of Biden’s radical social agenda. And nowhere is that more critical than the United States military.

Of course, the president-elect is used to inheriting messes. (He spent four years cleaning up Barack Obama’s.) This time around, the repeat commander-in-chief will have his hands equally full. Morale is in the (gender-free) toilet, deadly conflicts blaze around the world, readiness and retention are in the basement, and our technology is about to become a distant second to China’s. Since the day Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office, he’s been too obsessed with advancing the culture war to fight the real ones. And until that changes, the shortfall of troops won’t either.

From everything (and everyone) Trump has appointed, the next administration has a good grip on the severity of the crisis. If the collective meltdown over Pete Hegseth’s nomination to head-up the Defense Department is any indication, the military is about to undergo a top-to-bottom overhaul. And not a moment too soon.

And based on the latest reports, the 47th president knows exactly where to start: with the rollback of Biden’s devastating transgender policy. Sources from inside Trump camp say priority number one is weeding out the thousands of gender-confused troops this administration welcomed into the ranks under the guise of “inclusion.” Unlike last time, when Trump tried to undo the Obama trans policy with tweets, the president-elect is said to be planning an executive order that would put the brakes on transgender service on day one.

According to The Independent, “The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.”

While no one has a real read on how many troops would be affected — liberal sources say upwards of 15,000 — the Pentagon counted 2,200 servicemembers who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021 of the country’s 1.3 million active-duty personnel.

Though the Trump team refuses to confirm its plans on the policy, the Left is already in a panic, spinning a web of lies in advance of the change. “There is no money being spent,” Paulo Batista, one of the Navy’s trans-identifying analysts lied. “It’s just continued care.” But that “continued care” — at a bare minimum — includes a refrigerator full of hormones that costs upwards of $3,700 per person, per year, according to the National Library of Medicine. The actual transition surgery can range from an eye-popping $20,000 to more than $150,000 depending on the complexity of the operation.

No one has to guess where Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the DOD, stands on the topic. The young veteran has been extremely vocal about his frustrations with our woke military, calling the current leadership “weak” and “effeminate.” This whole idea of taxpayer-funded medical care for these troops (which FRC calculated before Bidenflation to cost the nation billions of dollars in hormones, surgeries, counselors, and lost service time) is “an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford,” he argued. To waste this kind of money on such a small population is “trans lunacy,” Hegseth fumed, to say nothing of the “complications” it causes.

Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Robert Maginnis, FRC’s senior fellow for National Defense, made the point that if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) supports single-sex facilities in the Capitol, “the same should be true for the U.S. military.” “For readiness reasons, all transgender persons ought to be booted out of the ranks,” he insisted.

Of course, as he explained, all of this has its roots in the past two decades of the Left’s “confused sexuality.” “Early in the 20th century, the military considered gender dysphoria a mental condition and refused to enlist such persons. Then in 1993, President Bill Clinton came to the White House promising to lift the Pentagon’s long-standing ban on homosexuals. Clinton’s directive resulted in the policy known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ … [Then], eventually, President Barack Obama pulled the plug on that policy promising sexual orientation was not a barrier to service in the military.”

Back then, Maginnis pointed out to The Washington Stand, “military personnel with common sense knew all too well that sex in an already limited-privacy setting, especially same-sex attraction, is a readiness issue and always will be. Unfortunately, the woke Left under President Joe Biden pretends otherwise and uses his political power to throw sanity overboard. Today, the Pentagon’s ranks include allegedly thousands of transgender personnel” that hinder America’s ability to fight and win wars.

Practically speaking, Biden’s policy doesn’t even make sense. A trans-identifying person needs a steady stream of hormones and drugs, “which means that he or she can’t deploy overseas and must remain under a doctor’s constant care. That’s an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford because it detracts from combat readiness.”

Before the election, Trump vowed to scrap all of the wokeness plaguing our military, Maginnis continued, “which includes the transgender issue.” The reasons are obvious, he underscored: “Our service members have a full plate preparing for war, and any distractions or unnecessary drain on our precious resources must be eliminated. Besides, there are likely more healthy, well-adjusted people who would take their place in the ranks if the Pentagon dumps the woke nonsense and focuses on what’s important to our national defense.”

To those who say America can’t afford to lose thousands of personnel “at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” as one source complained, the administration didn’t think twice about booting 8,000 qualified men and women from the ranks when they refused the COVID vaccine. Where were the alarmists then?

In this instance, the impact can only be positive. As Maginnis reminds everyone, “Trans-identifying troops are non-deployable, and they create a health care burden. We only recruit and retain those who advance readiness.” In dangerous times like these, he cautioned, “We need every service member to be ready to deploy. For every non-deployable person like the trans soldier, another service member must be sent in their place. That creates additional burdens on an exhausted force and hurts morale.”

Not to mention, if the military can reject someone for a mild peanut allergy or flat feet or taking Adderall for six months as a child, why on earth would it accept the ongoing distraction of recruits with mental health issues and ongoing medical needs?

As Major General (Ret.) Joseph Arbuckle said on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” “There is no right to serve in the military. Nobody has that right. Standards drive performance, and if the trans community cannot meet those standards, and if they’re not prepared to deploy physically or mentally because of that, then they should not be serving. That’s the bottom line.” Congressman Mark Alford (R-Mo.), who was guest hosting the show, agreed. “The enemy doesn’t really care what your pronoun is.”

During an exchange with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a hearing, Alford remembers saying, “‘[I]f we go … right now across the Potomac, and we look down at those white tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery, would you be able to tell me the skin color or the gender or the pronoun of that person?’ And [Austin] said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘That’s because our diversity is not our strength. Our strength is from our unity of our common purpose.’”

When Trump strips DEI out of the military, he’ll restore a lot of morale that Arbuckle thinks is “suffering through the ranks right now, because the mission focus has been taken away.” “So I see the morale coming up. I see recruitment coming up. I see retention coming up. And our combat effectiveness. … That’s exactly what we need.”

At the end of the day, political correctness doesn’t win wars — and it’s time to put an end to policies that pretend it does.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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Tugging a Strand of History: Feminism, Communism, and Transgender Bathrooms

PERKINS: Capitol Bathroom Debate Is a Symptom of Much Deeper Problems

Trio of Trump Picks Creates Headaches for GOP

November 19, 2024/in Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

You know it’s a surreal time in Washington, D.C. when Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is the Democrat making the most sense. While his party has a collective “freakout” over Donald Trump’s potential hires, the Senate’s resident hoodie-wearer was asked if he’s as panicked as his colleagues about the president-elect’s Cabinet choices. “It’s still not even Thanksgiving yet,” he told CNN. “And if we’re having meltdowns, you know, every tweet or every appointment or all of those things, I mean, it’s going to be four years.”

And yes, while Trump probably did have fun “trolling” Democrats with some of these picks, as Fetterman said, they’re not the only ones with reservations. At least three of the president’s nominees are giving both parties heartburn heading into the holidays: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Matt Gaetz, and Pete Hegseth. Welcome to the job, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). You’ve just been handed a political nightmare.

Philip Wegmann, White House Correspondent for Real Clear Politics, said this all clears up one thing: “This is Donald Trump’s transition and no one else’s.” Wegmann, who joined Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill” thought — like many people — that the president-elect was “playing it safe” with his first string of announcements. “There was a bit of bipartisan consensus behind a pick like, say, Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. That’s someone who is certainly well-qualified for that position. … And then came some of these more unconventional picks. Pete Hegseth for Department of Defense Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, and then most recently, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. What that tells you is that it is Donald Trump, fundamentally, who is making these decisions — and him alone. It’s not an advisor. It’s not any outside group. It’s him.”

The only decision he couldn’t control was Thune’s promotion. While Trump didn’t weigh in personally on the Republican leadership race in the Senate, plenty of his surrogates did. And in the end, the pressure they exerted didn’t sway the more insulated chamber. “The reason why I think that we should still put a pin in this and watch closely,” Wegmann said of Thune and his party, “is that there’s sort of a bubbling frustration among the right flank. … With how things are going … Republicans are of the opinion that Donald Trump has a mandate after winning the Electoral College and also the popular vote. And so, the question is, when someone like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has shown that he is ready to move the ball down the field, are Senate Republicans also going to be team players here?”

While Senator Marco Rubio, Lee Zeldon, and others are “no-brainers” for the administration, as Perkins called them, there are other question marks, like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R), who, apart from the hysteria her dead puppy created, lost plenty of fans when she caved on popular girls’ sports protections. As Wegmann acknowledged, Noem has had “a bit of a fall from grace certainly.” But, he predicted, “I’m not certain that we’re going to see Republicans abandon ship here.” Heading Homeland Security may seem like a big job, but “I think she is seen sort of as a key piece here who’s going to compliment Tom Homan, the border czar.”

Although Gaetz may lead the pack of controversial picks, equally triggering to Democrats (and many conservatives) is the nod for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services (HHS). “You want to talk about a realignment?” Wegmann asked. “RFK Jr. represents so much of what is new from Donald Trump, because of Trump’s ability to reach out to Independent voters who are perhaps homeless among the two-party system,” he pointed out. “But let’s not forget RFK Jr. [is] a Catholic individual, but he also supports abortion rights. He’s very skeptical of pharmaceutical companies, but he’s also anti-Big Bank, anti-Big Business. He’s an environmentalist. This is one of these guys who sort of breaks the mold. And Democrats, I don’t think many of them are going to lend their support to RFK Jr. at HHS. I’m curious to see if there will be many Republican defections.”

If former Vice President Mike Pence got a vote, it would be an emphatic no. “The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence insisted on Friday. “I believe the nomination of RFK Jr. to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades,” he declared.

Perkins, for his part, said he’d be “willing to sit down and talk” with the moderate but admitted he has “reservations.” “For me, the sanctity of human life and that moral fabric of our nation, that foundation, is absolutely critical. I’d have to have some assurances there for now. Put me in the skeptical column when it comes to RFK.”

The nomination that has had the most heads spinning is Gaetz’s, which took even his own party by surprise. As Axios tells it, the announcement was met with “audible gasps by House Republicans” in the conference meeting last week. “The reason why this is interesting,” Wegmann believes, “is that if you talk to Gaetz allies, they’ll say that in preparation for this contentious confirmation battle, he’s burning the ships like Cortez. … If you talk to folks who are a bit more cynical, the timing here is very curious. The House Ethics Committee was preparing to release a report concerning [the] activity of Mr. Gaetz and an allegedly underage girl,” he explained, “and by leaving Congress that effectively stymies that effort. … [T]hat was sort of the speculation that perhaps he was leaving early to avoid that accountability.”

Of course, as both men made clear, once a member leaves Congress, they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee, so the investigation is — for all intents and purposes — dead. But there is the very real possibility that Democrats could leak it out as the nomination advances. What Wegmann has heard is that the report is a “grenade,” and it’s “only a matter of time before it explodes.” Democrats, after all, “have an incentive for this information to get out there, but they don’t want it to go off right now. They want to wait until it’s able to inflict maximum damage. Then there are some Republicans who would rather this information get out earlier, so the president-elect can either reexamine his choice or perhaps Gaetz can bow out.”

The “conference-splitter,” as Axios called him, got a cool reception from senators like Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and others who don’t seem anxious to give Trump a pass on this one. “This shows why the advice and consent process is so important,” Collins said, hinting that she won’t be so quick to let the president-elect bypass the traditional vetting with recess appointments. Murkowski stressed that Gaetz wasn’t even “a serious candidate.” “If I wanted to make a joke, maybe I would say now I’m waiting for [disgraced former Congressman] George Santos to be named.”

Of the three nominees who are most outside the box, Fox News’s Pete Hegseth is probably getting the most movement support. Several columnists are making the argument that the young veteran is plenty experienced, despite the Left’s shrieks to the contrary. The rumblings over his personal life have certainly given his detractors fodder, but others believe he is skilled enough — and determined enough — to overhaul the military and purge the Defense Department of four years of social experimentation.

Still, the thought “makes the Left go crazy,” Wegmann admitted. “But this is someone who was in the Armed Services for 20 years. He has won medals, and his nomination makes sense if you look at his book, if you look at the Shawn Ryan interview. This is someone who is absolutely on fire for reforming the Pentagon and going after sort of the woke excesses there. I think that’s why Donald Trump picked him. And Hegseth will be prepared for that confirmation hearing. You don’t get to be on TV every weekend if you’re not quick on your feet. I think he’s got a good shot.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

Jim Jordan Highlights Why Matt Gaetz Should be AG

‘Gender-Industrial Complex’ Worth Billions Annually: Report

August 31, 2024/in Abortion, Courts & Law, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Queers and pedophiles, Religion, Science, Social Issues, Socialism, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The most mysterious feature of the 2023 SAFE Act Wars was that virtually every major hospital system — across 20+ states — lobbied vehemently against the bills. At nearly every public hearing, the speaking roster was saturated by three groups speaking in opposition: transgender activists, families with trans-identifying youth who hadn’t yet come to regret the procedures, and medical professionals, typically associated with a local hospital system.

Yet 2023 was a tipping-point year, in which the number of states with laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures increased from four to 22. This dramatic shift occurred because the dangerous, experimental nature of these surgeries became increasingly apparent. Otherwise progressive European countries such as the U.K., Norway, and Denmark pulled back on providing gender transition procedures to minors. Even state legislators, many of whom lack a medical background, were able to clearly grasp the lack of medical evidence and the potential for harm with these procedures, often articulating those reasons in the legislation they passed.

This raises the question, if the fundamental unsoundness of providing gender transition procedures to minors was evident to everyone from Norway to North Dakota, why couldn’t hospitals see it? A recent report from the American Principles Project suggests an explanation: hospitals and drug manufacturers were blinded by the Benjamins — billions of dollars’ worth.

The American Principles Project (APP) commissioned business consulting firm Grand View Research to conduct a market analysis measuring the volume of the gender-reassignment surgery industry. They recently estimated its value at a whopping $4.12 billion in 2022, with a compounded annual growth rate of 8.4% through 2030. The APP published those numbers this summer in an 88-page report.

Estimate Is Likely an Undercount

Due to various complications in data collection, nearly all estimates of the U.S. gender transition industry will be conservative (tending to undercount rather than overcount), the APP report stated, including the one they commissioned. American health care lacks the comprehensive, centralized data collection of socialized medicine, so researchers must compile data in other ways. For instance, a 2022 study by Komodo Health analyzed insurance claims and found 42,000 minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021, but this necessarily excluded all medical activity not covered by insurance.

Other studies have also struggled to find complete datasets. For example, studies that analyze gender transition procedures based on their medical code will necessarily fail to detect gender transition procedures labeled with a generic medical code. In a 2019 video, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained that this was a deliberate strategy. “For the patient who gets a big bill because their insurance doesn’t cover any transgender-related codes, I usually write ‘endocrine disorder not otherwise specified’ to allow me to order the labs that I want,” Taylor said.

Taylor was influential in convincing Vanderbilt University Medical Center to practice gender transition procedures because “these surgeries make a lot of money.” Based on figures from the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, “female-to-male chest reconstruction could bring in $40,000,” and “around $20,000 for a vaginoplasty,” Taylor cited. “That doesn’t include your post-op visits. That doesn’t include your anesthesia, your OR. So I would think this has to be a gross underestimate. I think that’s just, like, the surgeon’s piece of it.”

Leaked video of the profit rationale behind the gender transition program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center may have played a role in Tennessee enacting legislation to protect minors from gender transition procedures in March 2023.

Another reason to believe these numbers represent an undercount is that estimates of the number of trans-identifying people in America are significantly higher. The pro-LGBT Williams Institute estimated in June 2022 that 1.6 million Americans identify as transgender, including approximately 300,000 youth aged 13-17. While it’s possible that the Williams Institute has a political motive to inflate these numbers, it still yields a much larger estimate than studies that look at medical data.

Transgender activist Robbi Katherine Anthony “(who prefers going by RKA),” APP notes, multiplied the number of transgender-identifying Americans with the “average cost of transition,” estimated at $150,000, to speculate that the potential gender transition market could be valued in excess of $200 billion, “larger than the entire film industry.”

Even if these studies are significant undercounts, they do serve to show the trend. Every study shows a dramatic increase over time in people seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, especially among young people. One study reviewed for the APP report showed that “health system encounters for gender identity disorder rose from 13,855 in 2016 to 38,470 in 2020.”

Costly Procedures

Why such staggering costs? Gender transition surgeries are attempting to reshape — or more accurately, war against — a person’s natural biology. Advanced plastic surgery techniques can recreate the appearance if not the function of different organs. But, as Taylor suggested, the price tag for each individual procedure can be pricey. The APP includes a list of common procedures and their prices:

Augmentation Mammoplasty, $6,000-12,000
Voice Feminization Surgery, $5,000-9,000
Reduction Thyrochondroplasty, $3,500-7,000
Orchiectomy, $5,000-8,000
Vaginoplasty, $10,000-40,000
Chest Masculinization Surgery, $6,000-10,000
Scrotoplasty, $4,000-6,000
Hysterectomy, $9,500-22,500
Phalloplasty, $20,000-150,000
Mastectomy, $15,000-50,000
Metoidioplasty, $20,000-30,000
Facial Feminization Surgery, $20,000-50,000+
Electrolysis, $50-200 (one-hour session)
Laser Hair Removal, $200-1,000
Vocal Training, $50-200 per hour

In general, these are surgeries to a person’s face, throat, chest, or genitalia that result in him or her looking more like the opposite sex. Readers who want more specificity can do their own research. It will not be family-friendly or conducive to good digestion. You have been warned.

These costs add up as trans-identifying individuals pursue multiple procedures. The APP estimated that the “total cost of fully transitioning” ranges from $87,300-410,600 for males and from $66,500-605,500 for females. This assumes five years of puberty blockers (at $3,000-$25,000 per year) and 60 years of cross-sex hormone use (from age 16 to age 76, the average life expectancy, with estrogen estimated at $240-2,400 per year and testosterone at $200-4,200 per year).

These cost estimates do not factor in related medical costs, such as hospital stays and anesthesia. Nor does it factor in the potential for secondary surgeries. “A study in the medical journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that up to a third of patients ‘undergo secondary surgical revision to address functional and aesthetic concerns after penile inversion vaginoplasty,’” cited the report. “A similar study in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported that revisions for transfeminine vaginoplasty are frequent. These are lifetime, repeat customers, and there are more of them all the time.”

Market Competitors

Whether the market is worth $4 billion annually or a somewhat larger amount, that’s a large pot to split between relatively few players.

According to the market analysis from Grand View Research, 11 hospital and surgery systems account for nearly half (48.7%) of the sex reassignment market revenue in 2022, with other medical systems comprising the rest. Seven of these are in California and New York (including Cedars Sinai, Mount Sinai, and Kaiser Permanente), and the other four are: Regents of the University of Michigan, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and The Johns Hopkins University.

(Keep in mind, however, that hospital and surgery centers operate in somewhat location-specific markets; coastal surgery centers are likely not competing for clients with, for instance, Sanford Health, the pro-transgender hospital giant of the upper Plains states.)

Grand View Research also attempted to construct a snapshot of the top drug companies providing gender transition hormones. However, this picture was far less complete; many puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are prescribed off-label, making them harder to track, the APP explained.

The research only accounted for an estimated 14.6% of the market, totaling $234 million in 2022. The top five companies Grand View Research tracked were Pfizer, Inc. (4.6% estimated market share), AbbVie, Inc. (3.2%), End International plc (2.9%), Novartis AG (2.1%), and Lilly (1.8%).

Disaggregated data such as these contribute to the reliability of Grand View Research’s overall estimates. It shows their work, demonstrating that the overall estimates were not invented out of thin air, but represent the aggregate of more minute and concrete estimates, which are more likely to be accurate.

Lobbying Incentive

With such large potential profits on the line, it puts in perspective the efforts by hospital lobbyists seeking to defeat bills protecting minors from gender transition procedures.

If hospitals view gender-confused children as potential lifelong patients, then state laws protecting children from the depredations of gender transition procedures are a direct threat to their business model. Not only does it delay their ability to profit off these children for five years or so, but it also threatens their ability to recruit that child as a lifelong patient at all. Research cited by the Indiana State Medical Association in 2023 has shown that 60% to 95% of minors with gender dysphoria will eventually embrace their biological sex, if puberty is allowed to occur normally, whereas 95% of children who begin puberty blockers will proceed to cross-sex hormones and surgery.

These lobbying campaigns cannot be reduced to the simple question, what is the best practice medical care for children? The APP report notes, “There lurks beneath the surface of ‘best practices’ an incentive structure and a market, both real and potential.” That incentive structure and market are preventing medical systems from seeking the best interest of their gender-confused patients.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

American Doctors Sign Declaration Protecting Children from Gender Procedures

June 7, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

There have been numerous reports over the years that have found that “gender affirming care” is not based in scientific fact and is harmful for those who partake in it — especially children. However, two recent factors have served to significantly increase the urgency of those calling for an end to gender transition procedures.

In May, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) files were leaked, which “revealed that the clinicians who shape how ‘gender medicine’ is regulated and practiced around the world consistently violate medical ethics and informed consent.” Additionally, a groundbreaking U.K. report, also known as the Cass Review, was published in April. Among several shocking revelations, the review emphasized the “remarkably weak evidence” for the benefits of trans procedures. The report noted, “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”

Considering the longstanding arguments against gender procedures, as well as the recent and shocking research concerning the matter, thousands of medical professionals have come together to “unite” their voices. A mighty force within these thousands is the American College of Pediatricians (ACP), who announced their unwavering support of the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration (DPCD), which was created to push against the gender politics infiltrating medicine.

The DPCD, which launched Thursday, was signed by Family Research Council as well as a plethora of doctors, health leaders, medical and health policy organizations, and others. “For the past decade, we’ve seen the transgender ideology capture mainstream institutions, including hospitals, medical associations, schools, and, of course, the Democratic Party and the president of the United States,” said FRC President Tony Perkins on Wednesday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” But “despite this ideological capture,” he emphasized, “there still exists many doctors and health care professionals that do follow the science,” and are committed to protecting youth.

Dr. Jill Simons, the executive director of ACP and co-signer of the declaration, is one of those professionals committed to true science, and she joined Perkins to further discuss the significance of the DPCD. “We at the American College of Pediatricians have been sounding the alarm for years about the harms that are being done to children in the name of standards of care,” she said. But “we aren’t the only ones that have been sounding the alarm. There are many other organizations … from all different spectrums of policy [that] are concerned about this.”

On behalf of ACP, Simons asserted, “[T]his needs to stop and end. … [W]e have been pushed to the sidelines and discredited and … dismissed. … Well, we’re here to say that there is no consensus about these standards of care. And, in fact, they are harmful. So, we are saying enough.” Perkins noted, in light of groups like ACP who are standing up, “it appears that the tide is turning.” He added, “[Y]ou plant a flag on truth, even when it’s not in vogue. But eventually people begin to come around, and it would appear to me that people are starting to come around because of the harms that have come from this radical ideology.” Simons agreed, stating, “It breaks my heart that my profession has been captured by this ideology.” But, she added, “there are good doctors out there that are looking out for [what] really is best” for minors.

To further prove the determination, Simons, along with several co-signers of the DPCD, gathered at National Press Club Thursday to officially launch the declaration. At the event, Simons called on multiple medical organizations “to follow the science … and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.” And in addition to Simons’ comments, each pediatrician took time to express their passion for the declaration.

Dr. Andre Van Mol, representing the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, ACP, and the American Academy of Medical Ethics, stated plainly: “Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis … transgenderism is an ideology.”

He continued, “Transition affirmation is not proven to be safe or effective long term. It does not reduce suicides. It does not repair mental health issues or trauma. Minors cannot give truly informed consent. Children have developing and immature brains. Their minds change often. They are prone to risk taking, they are vulnerable to peer pressure, and they don’t grasp long term consequences.” And as such, he contended, “Refusing to provide gender transition procedures or so-called gender affirming health care is non-discriminatory and is appropriate both professionally and scientifically.”

Quoting the philosopher, Voltaire, Dr. Carl Benzio from the American Academy of Medical Ethics and the Christian Medical and Dental Association, said, “[W]hen people believe absurdities, they will commit atrocities.” He emphasized that such “absurdities” are rooted in “gender confusion, dysphoria, dissonance, and evasion,” which are all “a manifestation of deeper psychological struggles.” For those who “desire for all children to find healing,” he said, “please join us in stopping the belief and absurd … policies and malpractice” and return to “treatment standards based on sound science, common sense, and the truth so we can protect kids from atrocities inflicted on their mind, body, and spirit.”

And when it comes to returning to “sound science,” Nicole Hayes, director of State Public Policy with the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, insisted, “This does not require courage, inasmuch as that only requires acknowledging truth and a desire to help and not harm.” Ultimately, “Medical decision making should respect biological reality and the dignity of the person by compassionately addressing the whole person,” Hayes argued. “Anything less is disastrous for patients and for the health care profession and will not promote human flourishing.”

Finally, Louis Brown, a board member and vice president of Public Policy for the Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance, proclaimed that “every child deserves ethical medical care that protects each child’s life, health, and human dignity.” As he put it, “Justice demands that our nation’s health care system provide care that upholds the beauty and truth of every child’s dignity and true identity.” Because, as he highlighted, “Children dealing with gender confusion or gender dysphoria are owed love [and] compassion,” which is not what they receive from those pushing gender procedures.

“[A]s you’ve heard, we’ve spoken loud and clear that we are going to protect children,” Simons concluded.

Reflecting on the launch of the DPCD, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of FRC’s Center for Family Studies, told The Washington Stand:

“FRC has been in this fight for a long time, and therefore, those who support us have also been in this fight for a very long time. …I think this should be very encouraging to everyone, because there was a time, not too long ago, where you could barely get one mental health provider and maybe a handful of doctors who would be willing to take a stand against the harms done to children. But now you have a whole group of doctors, a whole group of mental health providers and all these organizations, that are willing to put their necks on the line. I mean, this is costly.

“There are finally enough people who are saying, ‘I’m going to think more about children than I am my own credentials and my own financial future,’ and that’s very encouraging. We need that kind of boldness. We need that kind of stance in this hour. We can’t let another generation be swept up into a lie.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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NHS Formally Declares Sex a ‘Biological’ Reality

May 6, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

Britain’s top health authority is officially rejecting transgender ideology and declaring that biological sex is a reality, while “gender identity” isn’t. The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) is revising its constitution to state, “We are defining sex as biological sex.” The proposed constitutional revisions stress a need for “respecting the biological differences between men and women,” further warning, “If these biological differences are not considered or respected, there is the potential for unintended adverse health consequences.”

Among other things, the constitutional revision will bar biological men who identify as women from accessing female-only wards, allow female patients to request other biological females for “intimate care,” and do away with terms such as “chestfeeding” and “birthing people.”

“We need to be making this robust case to refuse to wipe women out of the conversation,” Health Secretary Victoria Atkins stated, according to The Telegraph. “We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that. By putting this in the NHS constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”

“The confusion between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in official policies like the NHS constitution is what has enabled women’s rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities,” explained Maya Forstater, co-founder and chief executive of the advocacy group Sex Matters. “Sex, of course, is a matter of biology, not identity, and it is welcome that the NHS is now spelling this out in relation to single-sex accommodation and intimate care.”

Last year, then-Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced similar plans to eliminate “wokery” in the NHS, including barring biological who identify as women from accessing female-only wards, doing away with terminology like “chestfeeding,” and restoring the word “woman” to NHS guidance on subjects like menopause and ovarian cancer. “We need a common-sense approach to sex and equality issues in the NHS,” Barclay said at the time. “It is vital that women’s voices are heard in the NHS and the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients are protected.”

The constitutional revisions are hardly the only changes the NHS is making in its approach to transgenderism. In March, NHS England formally banned the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors, announcing instead a focus on family therapy, individual child psychotherapy, parental support or counseling, and other forms of counseling and therapy. “Puberty blockers … are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness,” NHS England announced. Last month, Scotland’s NHS offices followed suit, “pausing” the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors while health officials examine “evidence of safety and long-term impact for therapies.”

Many of the changes in how British healthcare practitioners approach transgenderism center around the publication of the Cass Review, an extensive four-year investigation led by renowned pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass into gender transition procedures for minors. The report found that there was “remarkably weak evidence” to recommend the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs, there was “no evidence” that gender transition procedures prevented or reduced the risk of suicide, the majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria suffer from a host of often-neglected psychological co-morbidities, and serious research into the harms of gender transition procedures was impeded by “toxic” debate surrounding the topic. Additionally, the groundbreaking 400-page report found that gender transition procedures for children are largely based on biased and even low-quality research.

For example, the infamous Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic at Tavistock worked in close conjunction with transgender activist group Mermaids. In 2022, two years before her final report was due, Cass urgently recommended that the U.K. government shut down Tavistock’s GIDS clinic, based on concerns over an absence of child safeguarding and an excess of gender ideology guiding staff members’ decisions. Cass reported that staff and clinicians often rushed children as young as 10 years old onto puberty blocker and hormone drug regimens, sometimes after as few as three consultations. Ninety-six percent of child patients at Tavistock’s GIDS clinic were placed on puberty blockers and numerous whistleblowers reported that staff often diagnosed children with gender dysphoria while ignoring or neglecting other psychological conditions such as autism, anxiety, or depression.

In the wake of the Cass Review’s publication, a cohort of 16 unnamed clinical psychologists penned an open letter saying that they were “ashamed of the role psychology played in gender care” and of how psychologists “failed young people at Gender Identity Development Service clinics.” The clinicians called for “accountability for the managers and clinicians who pursued such unethical practice and caused avoidable harm to young people,” adding that “the role of our own profession should be fully examined.”

Numerous European countries have halted or placed stringent safeguards around gender transition procedures for minors. France, Sweden, Norway, and Finland have joined the U.K. in largely or entirely halting the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to children, warning that there is a lack of thorough research and study surrounding the safety and efficacy of gender transition procedures. Yet the U.S. still allows for gender transition procedures to be practiced on minors, earning the label of “outlier.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Two Out of Three Kids Will No Longer Identify as Transgender by Adulthood, Massive Study Finds

April 6, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria will embrace their biological sex by adulthood, according to a sweeping national study that monitored children for 15 years.

Roughly two out of every three children who identify as transgender will embrace their birth sex by their mid-20s, the study found. People most likely to continue to identify as transgender have low self-esteem and other mental health challenges, researchers found.

A study of children in the Netherlands tracked 2,772 adolescents from the age of 11 to 26, asking them to rate their mental and physical health every three years for 15 years. The Youth and Adult Self-Report (YSR) asked participants to assess how much they agree with the statement, “I wish to be of the opposite sex.” A team of researchers then pored over the data from the Tracking Adolescent’s Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) to measure “gender non-contentedness.”

The vast majority (78%) of people never felt any feelings of gender dysphoria, researchers noted. “In early adolescence, 11% of participants reported gender non-contentedness,” wrote researchers in the study, published in February in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behavior. “The prevalence decreased with age and was 4% at the last follow-up (around age 26)” — a desistance rate of 64%.

Researchers also found that adolescents were 950% more likely to feel better about their sex than to feel worse: 19% of participants felt decreased “gender non-contentedness,” as compared with only 2% whose feelings deepened over time. Participants whose gender confusion worsened over the years “more often were female,” researchers noted.

Feeling more severe gender dysphoria as an adult is also “associated with a lower [overall] self-worth, more behavioral and emotional problems, and a non-heterosexual sexual” preference.

“Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development,” they concluded.

Experts felt vindicated by the latest research. “This new study simply confirms what has been known for over a decade,” Jay Richards, Ph.D., told The Washington Stand. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) “noted that most kids who experience distress with their sexed bodies resolve those feelings after they pass through natural puberty,” Richards — who serves as director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation — told TWS.

The Dutch study acknowledges it did not break new ground. Although few studies follow the same cohort for such a long period of time, the analysts admitted their findings fell in line with the best available literature. “The few longitudinal studies that have been conducted in a clinical setting found low persistence rates of early childhood gender dysphoric feelings into adolescence and adulthood,” wrote the researchers, linking to studies from 2016 and 2021. The latter found, “Boys clinic-referred for gender identity concerns in childhood had a high rate of desistance.”

Yet this and other studies reveal that “minors who are put on puberty blockers for the purposes of ‘gender affirmation’ are extremely likely to go on to take cross-hormones” such as estrogen and testosterone, Richards told TWS. Studies show up to 93% of children who begin on puberty blockers will go on to receive cross-sex hormone injections. Experts say the transgender industry’s early medical intervention actually deepens and prolongs feelings of gender dysphoria that would otherwise go away on their own. “This is what makes ‘gender-affirming’ (that is, sex-denying) medical interventions on minors such a medical atrocity. These interventions fast track troubled kids onto a path to sterilization and lifelong medical problems,” explained Richards.

The harm goes beyond lost fertility. “There is no research into long-term harms, but some evidence suggests decreased IQ and brittle bones. Permanent sterility is guaranteed for minors who go through full hormonal “transition.” Sexual dysfunction appears to be extremely common as well,” wrote Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, at The Hill. So-called “gender-affirming hormonal treatment” (GAHT) causes “permanent physical changes including excruciating genital growth, vaginal atrophy and tearing and much higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease.”

The authors of the new study said they hope their findings will “help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.” It should “provide some perspective to clinicians primarily seeing individuals with intense gender dysphoric feelings.”

This study, and others like it, prove that “children need time, not gender-‘affirming’ medical mutilation,” said Sarah Parshall Perry of the Heritage Foundation.

A growing number of young people subjected to transgender ideology at pediatric gender clinics say they wish they had known how common, and fleeting, feelings of transgenderism can be. “Young people, particularly young women, are very susceptible to social contagion. They are the most susceptible demographic,” Prisha Mosley, a detransitioner who now works with the Independent Women’s Forum, told Laura Ingraham Thursday evening. “And as for the 1% who continues to feel that way, they deserve ethical and data-based mental health care.”

She noted how easily she received transgender injections and procedures, as compared to treatment for her bona fide mental health issues. “I had actually been seeking mental health care and services for trauma and other mental illnesses that were diagnosed prior to my gender dysphoria diagnosis for several years. But as soon as I heard about gender ideology online and expressed to my doctors that I felt I was born in the wrong body, I was immediately fast-tracked,” Mosley told Ingraham on Fox News. She said it took her “almost 10 years after getting my diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder to find a dialectical behavioral therapist to treat it, but it was less than two years to go from hormones to a double mastectomy and transition.”

Mosley urged parents to guard their children against the predatory transgender industry, cautioning them to be cognizant of “the way people are manipulating and breaking down language” on the issue of gender. “And then do your best to prepare your children for that. Maybe tell them that there are tricky people out there who will twist language and manipulate them, because unfortunately, it’s true.”

“Sometimes these predators — these people — they’ll wear pins that say, ‘You’re safe with me,’ and all of that, but that can oftentimes be a signal that you’re not safe,” warned Mosley.

“This new Dutch study reminds us that children are being subjected to experimental medical interventions to treat what, in most cases, is a temporary psychological state,” Richards told TWS. “This is a grotesque perversion of the medical maxim to ‘first, do no harm.’”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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Leaked Files Reveal WPATH’s Awareness of ‘Debilitating,’ ‘Potentially Fatal’ Effects of Trans Procedures

March 8, 2024/in Commentary, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has a long history. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh wrote that WPATH “is the organization that major hospitals and gender clinics cite as the all-important authority on so-called ‘trans healthcare.’” Controversial at its core, WPATH has faced immense criticism over the years from those who do not support gender transition procedures, while at the same time receiving strong support from those who see cross-sex hormones, puberty blocking drugs, and surgeries to remove healthy organs as “gender affirming care.”

Despite losing over 60% of its members between January 2023 and January 2024, “WPATH is somehow now taken seriously as the standard-setter in the field, by major hospitals and medical associations,” Walsh wrote. But in reality, he continued, WPATH “is maybe the single greatest scam in modern medicine. … The WPATH of today is the proud product of decades of quackery and sexual experimentation. It is a threat to public health and in particular to children.”

On March 4, the U.S. think tank Environmental Progress released leaked files from WPATH that “revealed that the clinicians who shape how ‘gender medicine’ is regulated and practiced around the world consistently violate medical ethics and informed consent.”

It continued, “In the WPATH Files, members demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments. Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions. Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterize efforts to protect them as unnecessary ‘gatekeeping.’”

Most unsettling about the leaked files, experts have pointed out, is that they prove the alleged “medical professionals” are keenly aware “they are offering minors life-changing treatments they cannot fully understand.” On Wednesday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins highlighted on “Washington Watch” that the “injuries described in the files” that WPATH members are aware of “include sterilization, loss of sexual function, liver tumors, and even death.”

Concerning the leaked files, Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist and executive committee member of the American College of Pediatricians, observed on “Washington Watch” that “it’s a very large battering ram that’s hit the wall … that has been hiding all of the information that they know, and they willingly discuss among themselves.” He added that the files prove that the procedures they are doing on “these kids are clearly experimental [and] not based on science.”

He explained that doctors have been warning against WPATH and their practices for years in hearings and courts — efforts that have been repeatedly “shot down.” Van Meter emphasized that WPATH considers their work as “saving grace” and that they “save lives.” For years, WPATH has claimed that any contrary belief “is a bald-faced lie, and is politically motivated by right-wing conspiracy theorists,” he said. “That’s been their mantra since we’ve known them on the scene.”

Ultimately, he argued, the “WPATH secrets that have now been leaked show that [they have] no scientific background [and] that they are living and repeating lies over and over again. It’s quite shocking.” But he also described it as a “gift,” since it exposes the truth that “this is not good for children.”

Perkins added, “It exposes the fact that many of these entities that are held out as experts have been compromised by the political agendas of these ideologically driven individuals.” He continued, “This is what happens when this ideology, untethered to truth and ethics, mixes with science. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.”

Especially since “it leads to horrible outcomes for children,” Perkins contended. Children that “can’t drive … can’t get a tattoo, but we’re letting them cut off body parts and … make them think they’re changing their gender.”

Van Meter agreed. “This needs to be shouted from the … hilltops: ‘Stop.’ The whole world must stop this nonsense, this insanity. We have hurt hundreds of thousands of children irreparably since this whole process began in the mid-2000s, and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

Perkins asked if the leaked information would be enough to make “the medical associations … stop and rethink” what they’re doing. Van Meter responded, “That would be the intellectually correct thing to do.” However, what unsettled the doctor the most was how “casual” and “flippant” the members of WPATH seem to be discussing this. “The ideology is embedded so deeply in their minds that I don’t think they really care,” he remarked.

“It’s sad,” Perkins concluded. “It is absolutely sad. What an indictment against our culture to allow this to occur.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

‘Dems Want to Give Up U.S. Sovereignty’ to ‘New World Order’: Senator on WHO Treaty

February 1, 2024/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

The Democratic Party in general, and the Biden administration in particular, are eager to hand global governance institutions more influence over U.S. health policy, said the prime opponent of a new pandemic agreement.

The Biden administration has signaled its intention to adopt the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new accord on responding to global health pandemics such as COVID-19 or “Disease X.” The WHO Pandemic Agreement demands the U.S. turn over one-fifth of all vaccines and protective health equipment to WHO for redistribution, adopts a controversial “One Health” policy that makes human health no more important than animals or the environment, and encourages national governments to combat “misinformation” online. The WHO originally described the agreement as a “legally binding treaty” in December 2022 but changed its formal title to an “agreement” after the Biden administration realized it could not win Senate ratification, as the Constitution requires for an international treaty.

The Biden administration’s willingness to sidestep Congress on the WHO agreement — as it has on student loan “forgiveness,” an eviction moratorium, and other issues — troubles Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who introduced the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act. But the bill is “not getting much traction here in Congress,” Johnson told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on January 25, because the international accord has become “a partisan issue.”

“Every Republican except for the bill’s sponsor voted for my amendment, which would have deemed” the WHO agreement, which would give WHO greater authority over all Americans during deadly outbreaks, “a treaty subject to ratification in the Senate. And every Democrat voted against it,” said Johnson. “So, Democrats apparently want to give up U.S. sovereignty.”

Pro-life and pro-family advocates should be most concerned about expanding the WHO’s reach, power, and prestige, as it moves to polarize global health policy in favor of abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism, say its opponents. At last month’s board meeting, WHO announced it may strike a partnership with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), a well-funded pro-abortion lobbying group that pressures governments to enact lax abortion laws.

CRR is “one of the most nefarious, aggressively pro-abortion groups on the face of the Earth,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told Perkins earlier in the same show. That stems, in part, from its secretary-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, who won his post with China’s endorsement. “I’ve known him for 30 years. He used to tell me how pro-life he was. He is absolutely pro-abortion.”

Smith, the co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and his wife have tracked the influence CRR and WHO have had on global abortion policy for decades. Two decades ago, Smith entered into the Congressional Record “a document put out by the World Health Organization, and it’s all about the model legislation that they want for every country,” he said. WHO wants “no gestational limits, just like Biden is doing,” establishing a right to “abortion until birth.” WHO and the Democrats also believe pro-life physicians, who object to participating in abortions due to religious or moral reasons, should have “no ability to say no, no right of conscience. They say that is a barrier to access to abortion.”

Democrats and global WHO bureaucrats also oppose mandatory waiting periods, which have been shown to reduce the abortion rate and increase the number of babies born alive. “Very often when there’s a parental notification, or a waiting period, or some other small-but-necessary protection, women rethink it and they come to a different conclusion,” Smith told Perkins. “They want none of that.”

WHO is also scheduled to roll out a global health guidance instructing physicians how to respond to adults who identify as transgender — and stacked the group writing the guideline with radical transgender activists, most of whom have no medical background. One proposed member of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) previously took part in a global LGBT health symposium that “emphasised the need to provide [an] uninterrupted supply of … medical [hormone therapy] and gender-affirmative surgeries for trans people.” The minority of GDG members who have medical backgrounds often carry out, and financially benefit from, transgender procedures, creating a blatant conflict of interest.

WHO’s emphasis on climate change, and its lowering human health to the level of ecosystems, should also give Americans pause, said Johnson. President Dwight D. “Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned us about four things,” he noted. “The final thing he talked about [was how] we cannot let global society fall into a state of ‘dreadful fear and hate.’” But both have been inflamed by extreme COVID-19 lockdown advocates and Green activists who perpetually flog the threat of “catastrophic climate emergency” while demonizing their opponents, he said. “This is what tyrants do. They control people. They take away your freedom based on a state of fear.”

Johnson said the end game of those promoting the WHO Pandemic Agreement and other destructive policies is “the New World Order, total control, a borderless world. That’s part of the strategy behind an open border here in America.”

He quoted a video produced by the World Economic Forum, “‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.’ That’s basically their rallying cry. It’s sick. It’s frightening.”

“There are a lot of people,” warned Johnson, “in leadership positions who want to take your freedom away.”

He hoped other nations would recognize “that their national sovereignty, their health freedom may be taken away from them in this very dangerous negotiation.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

WHO Chief: Nations Must ‘Counteract Conservative Opposition’ to Abortion, Promote Transgenderism

January 24, 2024/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

A global government body has told nations it is “imperative” that they “counteract conservative opposition” and “enact progressive laws” that legalize prostitution and intentionally infect people with AIDS. At the same time, the international body has indicated it plans to roll out guidelines normalizing transgender cross-sex hormone injections worldwide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ushered in 2024 with a bulletin titled “Advancing the ‘sexual’ in sexual and reproductive health and rights: a global health, gender equality and human rights imperative,” co-written by WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, a former associate of Ethiopia’s repressive Marxist government.

“Political leaders at all levels must champion sexual health as part of sexual and reproductive health to counteract conservative opposition,” states the WHO Bulletin released on January 1. “Policy-makers must enact progressive laws and policies to expand access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services,” it says.

“Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission,” the bulletin advises. Ghebreyesus calls on world leaders to “foster societies where all people can experience their sexuality safely, positively,” couching the advancement of the Sexual Revolution as a moral imperative.

“Upholding sexual health is a moral obligation. Immense suffering is caused when people lack bodily autonomy; control over their fertility” — a likely reference to abortion — as well as “the freedom to experience safe, consensual and pleasurable sexual relationships,” states the bulletin. The bulletin did not explain how having sex with strangers for money and allowing people to spread AIDS with impunity increases sexual pleasure. Surveys have continually found the most sexually satisfied people are committed married couples who had no previous sexual experience.

The WHO bulletin also advocates population control measures in the name of reducing carbon emissions. “Sexual health even impacts environmental sustainability. Slowing unsustainable population growth by investing in family planning and education reduces pressures on natural resources and helps break cycles of poverty,” writes Ghebreyesus.

The bulletin insists that such libidinous concerns as the “right” to pleasure are “not fringe issues” but flow naturally from “universal values that cut across religious, partisan and cultural divides.”

The WHO missive echoed a 2012 report from the Global Commission on HIV and the Law — formed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and funded in part by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations — which called on nations to repeal laws that “prohibit commercial sex, such as laws against … brothel-keeping.” It also opposed laws criminalizing intentionally infecting others with HIV/AIDS, while criticizing “conservative interpretations of religion” and laws based on “morality.”

The new WHO bulletin advocates a broad agenda rooted in the extreme left-wing concepts of intersectionality and equity. “Violations of human rights in the context of sexual health are embedded in hierarchical structures of gender, generation, lineage, race, class, and caste, in which more powerful or privileged people control the bodies and emotions of the less powerful. People with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities often face stigma and discrimination,” states Ghebreyesus.

WHO condemned medical researchers for fixating on 99% of the global population through their “focus on predominantly cisgender and heterosexual populations.”

Ironically, WHO encourages politicians to enact new policies, because “[s]exual health of women and girls and gender-diverse individuals is politicized.” Yet WHO wishes for global support of the Sexual Revolution to go beyond political leaders to become a whole-of-society undertaking.

“Civil society and affected communities must mobilize to demand services, promote rights and reduce stigma,” writes Ghebreyesus. “Global leadership and funding are essential. International institutions should ensure sexual health is integrated within health, development and human rights frameworks.” Foreign aid should prioritize WHO’s goals, as should private nonprofit organizations, the memo states.

The New Year’s Day bulletin came as the World Health Organization asked for comment on the group of radical transgender activists WHO recruited to draw up global health guidelines on transgender procedures. The vast majority have no background in medicine.

After public backlash, WHO announced the group would not decree how doctors should care for minors who say they’re experiencing gender dysphoria. However, the adult guidelines will clearly affirm the transgender industry’s invasive procedures in the name of human rights.

“This guideline has a specific focus on adults and will not address issues relating to children and adolescents,” WHO announced last Monday, January 15.

WHO groused that many global health care settings “lack policies to facilitate access to inclusive and gender affirming care.” It clarified that “gender-affirming health care can include … a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions,” but “these new technical guidelines … will not consider surgical interventions.”

However, the new guidelines will insist doctors “provide more inclusive, acceptable and effective” care for trans-identifying people — by which they mean cross-sex hormone injections. “The guideline will reflect the principles of human rights, gender equality, universality and equity,” the January 15 statement proclaimed. It will also advance WHO’s alleged commitment to two United Nations statements “to protect all people from discrimination and violence on the grounds of gender identity and/or gender expression” and “eliminate discrimination in healthcare settings, including discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.”

Banning alleged “discrimination” against transgender people could penalize Christian health care workers with faith-based objections to carrying out gender-conversion procedures.

“This is obviously highly concerning for several reasons,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “One is the aggregation of worldwide power into entities like the World Health Organization, which are far removed from the proper decision-making authority.” But a more pertinent objection, he said, is the content of global governance bodies’ decisions.

“We’re seeing WHO and other world bodies — the U.N., Organization of American States, World Economic Forum — increasingly aligned with the anti-Christ position,” advancing views that are “antithetical to the Word of God. They are opposed to what Jesus says,” Weber told TWS. “God speaks to us about creation, about creating us male and female, about how before He formed us in the womb He knew us. That’s very different than what the world power centers are saying about reality.”

It is all the more concerning such ideological impositions are being carried out in the name of “science,” he said. Weber compared the use of the word “science” to a cargo vehicle driving down the highway: “We see the car moving, but we don’t see what’s being carried inside it. What’s inside [WHO’s use of the term ‘science’] is ideology. The term ‘health’ is taking on an ideological bent — not only on gender ideology but on abortion, which is the taking of an innocent life. The term health is being used to promote a pro-abortion ideology worldwide.”

The new documents come as the U.S. government is asking citizens to comment on the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement, originally called a treaty, which the Biden administration is considering adopting without Senate confirmation. The WHO agreement would require the U.S. to redistribute 20% of all vaccines and other equipment to WHO for redistribution, adopts a “One Health” policy equating human health with animal and plant life, and calls on governments to crack down on any social media post WHO dubs “misinformation.”

WHO’s decision to promote legalized prostitution, transgenderism, and population control measures in the name of health makes the global body “a dangerous place for everyone,” Weber told TWS.

The deadline to comment on the WHO Pandemic Agreement is Monday, January 22 by 5 p.m. Eastern time.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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Taxpayer-Funded Trans Procedures Lead Even Pioneers to Say Things Have ‘Gotten Out of Hand’

November 4, 2023/in Commentary, Culture War, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

U.S. taxpayers funded life-altering transgender surgeries, despite that fact that one of the global pioneers in the field says “gender transition has gotten out of hand” and likened it to the “recovered memory” craze that hurt vulnerable patients and tore families apart during the 1980s.

The hospital that opened the nation’s first pediatric gender transition facility, Boston Children’s Hospital, received $1.4 million from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) of Massachusetts for inflicting “gender transition services” between January 2015 and May 2023. The hospital’s Center for Gender Surgery carried out 204 transgender surgeries between 2017 and 2020 — including 65 gender-conversion surgeries on minors. The controversial facility offers double-mastectomies to children as young as 15 and phalloplasty to girls at the age of 17.

Boston Children’s Hospital would not disclose whether state taxpayer funds paid for minors’ transgender surgeries, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation, which broke the story.

This is far from the only time politicians have compelled taxpayers to fund transgender procedures at the child-mutilating facility. Boston Children’s Hospital received a $3.3 million grant from the Biden administration’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a website targeting young people in other states who identify as transgender, as well as to train the hospital’s staff. The hospital also took part in a five-year, NIH-funded study that monitored minors aged 12-20 who received cross-gender hormones; 240 of its 315 participants were underage. Two committed suicide, and 11 more contemplated ending their lives.

The negative outcomes trans-identifying youth suffer as a result of “gender-affirming care” matches the experience of Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish psychiatrist who established a gender transition clinic for minors in 2011. She has since participated in the evaluation of 500 children dealing with gender dysphoria.

“Soon after our hospital began offering hormonal interventions for these patients, we began to see that the miracle we had been promised was not happening,” she writes in an exposé in The Free Press. “The young people we were treating were not thriving.” Even when “young people insisted their lives had improved and they were happier,” the evidence belied their self-assessment. “They were withdrawing from all social activities. They were not making friends. They were not going to school.” And her colleagues across the continent “were seeing the same things.”

These patients, and the detransitioners who followed, are the “kind of patient who wasn’t supposed to exist.”

In 2015, the children visiting her changed from young men who had always identified as female. Now, the overwhelming majority of her patients were young women suffering from Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD): “90 percent of our patients were girls, mainly 15 to 17 years old, and instead of being high-functioning, the vast majority presented with severe psychiatric conditions.”

“Some came from families with multiple psychosocial problems. Most of them had challenging early childhoods marked by developmental difficulties, such as extreme temper tantrums and social isolation,” she writes. “In adolescence they were lonely and withdrawn. Some were no longer in school, instead spending all their time alone in their room. They had depression and anxiety, some had eating disorders, many engaged in self-harm, a few had experienced psychotic episodes.” One of their patients was mute, and “more than a quarter of our patients were on the autism spectrum.”

An American whistleblower, Jamie Reed, said the same conditions held at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where she said clinicians regularly ignored their patients’ panoply of other psychological and social conditions.

Most of the Dutch patients had never presented any gender dysphoria before coming to Dr. Kaltiala, who says ROGD had become the dominant patient profile for everyone working in the pediatric transgender field. The patients’ stories shared so many similarities, “We realized they were networking and exchanging information about how to talk to us.”

Although she authored a 2015 study questioning some aspects of the transgender-industry orthodoxy, she and her colleagues around the world felt pressured to keep their concerns private. “Even during the first few years of the clinic, gender medicine was becoming rapidly politicized,” Dr. Kaltiala writes. Activists in psychologists’ poses promised that young people would find “all their mental health problems would be alleviated by these interventions. Of course, there is no mechanism by which high doses of hormones resolve autism or any other underlying mental health condition.”

The condition holds true in the United States, she affirms, where the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have refused to hear dissenting voices or read data that contradict their predetermined conclusions. Yet “one new study shows that nearly 30 percent of patients in the sample ceased filling their hormone prescription within four years.”

“Anyone, including physicians, researchers, academics, and writers, who raised concerns about the growing power of gender activists, and about the effects of medically transitioning young people, were subjected to organized campaigns of vilification and threats to their careers,” she states. “We were being told to intervene in healthy, functioning bodies simply on the basis of a young person’s shifting feelings about gender,” she writes. “Identity achievement is the outcome of successful adolescent development, not its starting point.”

The doctor finds the transgender industry’s high-pressure sales tactics, in which they falsely claim a child will commit suicide unless parents allow the industry to begin transgender procedures, disreputable. Research, she notes, showing transgender-related “suicide is very rare. It is dishonest and extremely unethical to pressure parents into approving gender medicalization by exaggerating the risk of suicide.” The U.K.’s Tavistock Institute, which until recently carried out transgender procedures on minors, reported only four out of 15,032 patients had ended their lives. “The proportion of individual patients who died by suicide was 0.03%,” reported a 2022 study. Although these deaths are tragic, “[t]he fact that deaths were so rare should provide some reassurance” to parents.

Dr. Kaltiala likens “[w]hat is happening to dysphoric children” to the “recovered memory craze of the 1980s and ’90s. During that period, many troubled women came to believe false memories, often suggested to them by their therapists, of nonexistent sexual abuse by their fathers or other family members.” The psychologist-guided lies tore families apart, as children falsely believed their family meant them harm.

“[L]ike recovered memory, gender transition has gotten out of hand,” writes Dr. Kaltiala. “When medical professionals start saying they have one answer that applies everywhere, or that they have a cure for all of life’s pains, that should be a warning to us all that something has gone very wrong,” she concludes.

Americans caught up in the transgender debate welcome the skepticism of Dr. Kaltiala and others across Europe, where nations have progressively changed their protocols to protect children and adolescents from these experimental interventions.

“Gender dysphoria is far more invasive than any other diagnosis in the DSM,” Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, told FRC President Tony Perkins earlier this month. “Not only are we diagnosing early with something that would be considered a lifelong enduring pattern, but we’re also attaching interventions that are really dangerous and life-altering while a person is still a child.”

“Despite the popular spin, even the leading advocates of medically transitioning youth concede there are substantial research gaps and a lack of knowledge concerning long-term outcomes,” states “The Trans Youth Phenomenon: Critiques & Hard Questions,” a publication co-written by Bauwens as a collaboration between Family Research Council and the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

Nationally, the transgender industry carried out transgender surgeries on 3,678 minors between 2016 and 2019 nationwide, and “405 patients (11.0%) aged 12 to 18 years underwent genital surgery,” according to a report from the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open. More than one in four (25.3%) of the 48,019 people who underwent transgender surgeries during that time paid the bill with taxpayer-funded Medicaid. After the Obama-Biden administration swelled the ranks of Americans eligible for Medicaid, surging “Medicaid spending is ‘crowding out’ spending on other major state programs, most notably education and transportation infrastructure,” reported the Mercatus Center.

Transgender activists are advocating for Ohio’s Issue 1, which would make it illegal for the state to “directly or indirectly” burden any “individual” right to make “reproductive decisions,” language broad enough to require taxpayer-funded abortion and transgender surgeries for minors without parental notification — a position favored by several of Issue 1’s authors/sponsors.

Dr. Kaltiala’s decision to oppose transgender procedures for minors grew out of the reason she got into psychiatry in the first place: “My patients’ adult lives are still ahead of them, so it can make a huge difference to someone’s future to help a young person who is on a destructive track to find a more favorable course.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

UK Report: Over One Third of Children on Puberty Blockers Experienced Worsened Mental Health

September 27, 2023/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

New research from the United Kingdom is showing that over a third of children placed on puberty blockers and hormone drugs suffered severe mental health deterioration afterwards.

A 2011 study conducted at the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic for children reported that children who were put on puberty blockers suffered no adverse mental health effects. However, new analysis conducted by Susan McPherson, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Essex, and retired social scientist David Freedman found that the majority of children put on puberty blockers and hormone drugs experienced erratic and fluctuating mental health, including over a third whose mental health “reliably deteriorated.”

The original study, conducted on 44 children between the ages of 12 and 15, was reportedly based on group averages, while the new analysis relied on individual results, which McPherson and Freedman explained “allows us to look at how a treatment is performing in terms of the percentage of patients improving, deteriorating, and showing clinically significant change. … It is possible, using this approach, to look at patterns, such as who is benefitting and who is not.”

Last year, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) opted to close down the Tavistock GIDS clinic after a government report found that the staff rushed and even pressured minors into taking puberty blockers and hormone drugs with almost no psychological or medical oversight. A reported 96% of child patients were placed on puberty blockers by Tavistock staffers, and concerns were raised over a tendentious focus on “gender dysphoria,” instead of considering other psychological factors in recommending drugs or surgeries for minors, which were summarily dismissed. In fact, the situation was so concerning that Dr. Hillary Cass, the pediatrician tasked by the government with investigating the claims against Tavistock, offered her recommendation to shut down the clinic several months early, saying she had enough information already to justify closing Tavistock.

Cass particularly stressed concerns she had over the use of puberty blockers and other hormone drugs, which the Tavistock clinic had been prescribing to children as young as 10 years old, many of whom were already on the autism spectrum or suffering various mental health issues like depression or eating disorders. In her interim report to the NHS, Cass noted, “There is lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.” She added, “There has not been routine and consistent data collection, which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.”

Over the years, numerous whistleblowers — former staff governor Dr. David Bell, consultants and nurses like Marcus and Sue Evans, child safeguarding officer Sonia Appleby, and countless former patients who now, as adults, regret being put on puberty blockers and hormone drugs — have sounded the alarm over the Tavistock clinic’s practices. Most have pointed out that children and their parents were often denied informed consent as staffers rushed children onto puberty blockers after only three or four meetings. Some whistleblowers even explained that topics like “sexual orientation” were effectively off-limits and that a transgender identity and a battery of hormone drugs were the only options explored by clinicians. Others pointed out that the drastic rise in children going through Tavistock (from about 250 “patients” in 2011 to over 5,000 in 2021) and linked it to the growing puberty blocker and hormone drug industry.

The findings of the new analysis of the Tavistock study are in line with research conducted and published by Family Research Council. Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of FRC’s Center for Family Studies, explained earlier this year:

“At one time, gender dysphoria was considered a mental disorder, but now, due to the increasing prevalence of a worldview shaped by gender identity ideology, it has morphed into a human rights issue. The ideology borrows from the mental health aspects of gender dysphoria in order to justify medical ‘intervention.’”

She continued, “Advocates of gender-affirming care insist it is both lifesaving and evidence-based health care for those who identify as transgender. But the research used to make such a claim is full of methodological errors and can be easily disputed as a research body that is incomplete.” Notably, the original Tavistock study from 2011 focused on group studies instead of on individual situations and results. Bauwens added, “Not only are the currently published studies problematic, but there is a lack of ongoing and long-term follow-up reports that address the impact of cross-sex hormones and surgeries.”

In June, the NHS banned the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs on minors, following a growing swath of European medical experts who have backed off gender transition procedures for children. France, Sweden, Finland, and Norway have also put restrictions on the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs on children. The U.S. still hasn’t.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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7 Ways the FDA Decision to Sell Birth Control Pills Over-the-Counter Hurts Women

July 19, 2023/in Commentary, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues/by Family Research Council

The Biden administration approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill — a drug associated with mental and physical harms including higher rates of breast cancer, depression, and life-threatening ectopic pregnancies.

On Thursday, Biden’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the sale of Opill (norgestrel) without requiring a physical examination or prescription. Opill is a low-dose minipill also known as a progestin-only pill (or POP), unlike the standard birth control pill which combines estrogen and progestin (E+P).

The FDA press release trumpeting the decision listed “[t]he most common side effects of Opill” as “irregular bleeding, headaches, dizziness, nausea, increased appetite, abdominal pain, cramps or bloating.” But the progestin-only pill contributes to significantly worse side effects which the Biden administration left unmentioned.

1. Cancer. Hormonal contraception of all kinds increases the risk of certain forms of cancer. But studies show taking the progestin-only birth control pill specifically raises the odds of breast cancer, the most common cancer among women aside from skin cancers. In March, researchers at Oxford University found “a relative increase of around 20% to 30% in breast cancer risk associated with current or recent use of either combined oral or progestin-only contraceptives.” Even Biden’s celebratory press release noted, “Opill should not be used by those who have or have ever had breast cancer.”

The threat is not restricted to breast cancer. Progestin-only birth control also raises the risk of developing cancer of the glands (adenocarcinoma) or of the skin (squamous cancer), European researchers found in 2021. The same year, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) listed progesterone among substances that “are known or reasonably anticipated to cause cancer in humans.”

Progestin-only minipills may also cause women to suffer from cancer longer, with greater complications, by camouflaging cancerous cells from the body’s defense systems. “[P]rogesterone helps the tumor cells go unnoticed,” said Christy Hagan, PhD, assistant professor at the Cancer Center of the University of Kansas. “If breast tumor cells circulating in our body are exposed to progesterone, the hormone may conceal the tumor’s danger signals that are normally recognized by the immune system.”

The danger rises if progestin is combined with estrogen. The standard birth control pill (E+P) is a Group 1 carcinogen. The National Cancer Institute admits that “studies have provided consistent evidence that the risks of breast and cervical cancers are increased in women who use oral contraceptives.” Standard contraceptives also increase the chance of cervical cancer, with the risk rising progressively the longer a woman takes it: 10% higher for women who took the pill less than five years, 60% increased risk after 5–9 years of use, and doubling the risk after taking the pill 10 or more years.

Women maintain a higher likelihood of developing cancer for 10 years after they stop taking birth control pills.

2. Depression. Every birth control pill makes women more likely to become clinically depressed, but the progestin-only minipill seems to have the worst impact on women’s mental health. “All forms of hormonal contraception were associated with an increased risk of developing depression, with higher risks associated with the progesterone-only forms,” concluded Dr. Monique Tello of Harvard Medical School. (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Tello found one out of every 200 women who takes hormonal contraception of any kind will develop depression. At least nine million American women aged 15-49 use birth control pills, according to the CDC. That means 45,450 U.S. women will develop depression due exclusively to their contraceptive choice.

Foreign researchers have confirmed the link between POPs and negative mental health. A Danish study found women who took the minipill were 30% more likely to be prescribed antidepressants for the first time, and teenage “users of progestin-only pills experienced a 2.2-fold higher rate” than adolescents (15-19) who never used hormonal birth control. A Swedish study found those who ingested progestin-only pills were most likely to be prescribed antidepressants, especially among teens aged 16-19.

Progestin-only pills can amplify negative conditions and incarnate emotional pain in the rest of the body. Under stress, progesterone increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol; high cortisol levels lead to greater weight gain and fat retention, diabetes, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis. Progesterone levels are “likely causal factors for the mood symptoms experienced by women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD),” a team of researchers from Sweden and New Zealand found in 2020.

“A recent review has shown that sex hormones have significant impact on brain areas related to emotional and cognitive functioning,” wrote two researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “Progesterones have been shown to induce depression, particularly in vulnerable women.” How do women know if they are “vulnerable”? A physician’s appointment could screen women’s hormonal state. Yet doctors sometimes fail to inform women of potentially mood-altering side effects.

“Hormonal birth control is a lie sold to women,” wrote Chrissy Clark of the Daily Caller. “For 15 years I was on the pill & had inexplicable anxiety and depression[,] symptoms my doctors NEVER thought to tell me were the result of hormonal birth control. I’m over 1 year off hormonal birth control now. My skin is clearer, my anxiety is gone, & my depression is non-existent.”

“Ladies, you deserve freedom from these side effects. Get. Off. The. Pill.”

3. Ectopic Pregnancy. Women who get pregnant while taking progestin-only pills such as the Opill have a greater risk of experiencing a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, in which the newly conceived child implants in one of the fallopian tubes instead of the uterus. If undetected, the fallopian tube can rupture, causing serious side effects and even death. “If you get pregnant while taking the minipill, there appears to be a slightly higher chance” of an ectopic pregnancy, notes the Mayo Clinic. WebMD puts it bluntly: “If you get pregnant while taking the minipill, it can cause problems. You’re more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy.”

4. Potential Abortifacient. While they frequently block ovulation, all forms of hormonal birth control have the potential to induce an early abortion by preventing implantation — including the Opill the Biden administration has authorized for sale over-the-counter. “Progestin-only pills don’t prevent ovulation as well as combination birth control pills. Therefore, its effectiveness is slightly lower,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. Instead, the minipill “thickens cervical mucus and thins the lining of the uterus,” notes the Mayo Clinic. “These prevent sperm from reaching the egg and a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.”

A “fertilized egg” is a dehumanizing term for a newly conceived child.

5. Blood Clots, Heart Attacks, and Strokes. The Mayo Clinic notes that high doses of progestin “sometimes cause some unwanted effects such as blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes, or problems of the liver and eyes,” which “can be very serious and cause death.” While low-dose progestin-only pills are not known to increase blood clots by themselves, selling the pill over-the-counter denies women a medical screening that might detect if they already have elevated levels of progestin, or other factors that put them at high-risk for serious complications.

The standard birth control pill (E+P) makes women two to 10 times as likely to develop blood clots, which can lead to such life-threatening conditions as pulmonary embolism, deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), and increased risk for stroke. The Cleveland Clinic estimates “10 in 10,000 people per year develop [blood] clots as a result of being on birth control.” That means as many as 909 of the nine million American women who take the birth control pill will suffer blood clots attributable exclusively to contraception. Dr. Lynn Keegan found 300-400 women die every year from the side effects of all forms of hormonal contraception.

Considering the wave of seemingly inexplicable hospitalizations and deaths among young people of both sexes over the last few years, for various reasons, Americans should be concerned OTC birth control compounds the damage of other Biden policies that benefit Big Pharma.

6. Diabetes. Links between POPs and diabetes seem to be slight and remain under review. Still, researchers in Chile discovered “progesterone accelerates the progression of diabetes” in mice. Korean researchers found progesterone increases blood glucose levels under certain circumstances in 2021, and Chinese epidemiologists found higher levels of progesterone associated with prediabetes in 2019. Specific circumstances multiply progestin’s potential blood glucose impact. “[T]he use of a progestin-only [oral contraception] during breast-feeding was associated with a nearly 3-fold increase in the incidence of diabetes” among women who had previously had gestational diabetes, Japanese researchers discovered.

7. Religious Liberty. Selling birth control over the counter is likely to become a flashpoint in the ongoing battle to preserve religious liberty from encroachments by the Biden-Harris administration. The Biden administration issued an HHS guidance last July, warning pharmacies it will impose stiff, legal “corrective action” on pharmacists who refuse to hand out the abortion pill mifepristone and instruct customers “how to take” it. Liberal politicians and global governance bodies have long argued sexual “rights” should trump religious liberty. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) called on governments to actively counteract “religious” objections to so-called “emergency contraception” in its 2012 annual report, which declared, “Family planning is a human right. It must therefore be available to all who want it.” The Lancet and the Los Angeles Times have even suggested nuns should take the birth control pill to reduce their risk of certain cancers.

Religious liberty is the first liberty enshrined in the Constitution. Religious rights are human rights. And since most church-goers are women, it’s fair to say, “Religious rights are women’s rights.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

Whistleblower Explains How the Transgender Industry Convinces Parents to Mutilate Their Kids

February 14, 2023/in Culture War, Elections, Featured, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

A whistleblower’s explosive account reveals that the transgender medical industry uses high-pressure techniques, employs its own cadre of “experts,” and lies about the impact of puberty blockers and other drugs to convince parents to authorize lifelong “gender-affirming care” that effectively, or literally, castrates their children. When the parents refuse, at least one transgender clinic disregarded the will of the custodial parent, the insider’s testimony states.

Allegations of illegal activity come from an affidavit and accompanying article by Jamie Reed, a far-Left LGBT activist who worked for four years at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The affidavit attests doctors in the university’s transgender clinic prescribed experimental drugs to young children, ignored the children’s physical and mental health concerns, and may have committed Medicaid and insurance fraud. Her heartrending report has touched off separate investigations by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Yet her record of the pediatric gender clinic’s actions during her 2018-2022 tenure also contains damning information about the way the industry overcomes wary parents’ concerns and traps children into decades of costly, harmful “treatments.”

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The facility referred young people reportedly suffering “gender dysphoria” for an evaluation with a psychologist chosen from on a list of doctors they “knew they would say yes” to the gender transition, Reed states. One psychologist at the hospital was particularly “known to approve virtually everyone seeking transition,” she writes. If no outside psychologist signed the letter, the center referred the child to their two in-house psychologists, who would certify that the child should begin the gender reassignment process.

For the youngest patients, this meant beginning puberty blockers before administering a lifetime of cross-sex hormones. “The Center tells the public and parents of patients that the point of puberty blockers is to give children time to figure out their gender identity,” she writes. But in reality, the center uses those drugs “just until children are old enough to be put on cross-sex hormones. Doctors at the Center always prescribe cross-sex hormones for children who have been taking puberty blockers.” (Emphasis in original.)

The doctors’ insistence, rather than the children’s persistence, may explain another discrepancy: Left to their own devices, approximately 85% of children with gender dysphoria will identify with their birth sex by the time they reach adulthood. But nearly 100% of children placed on puberty blockers continue the gender transition process, notes Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council.

Doctors lie to assure parents will approve the puberty blockers, Reed reveals. “The doctors at the Center tell the public and tell parents of patients that puberty blockers are fully reversible. They really are not. They do lasting damage to the body,” says Reed. Those damages include “sterilization, reduced bone density, cognitive problems, increased body fat percentage and body mass index, decreased lean body mass, and arterial hypertension,” writes Bauwens.

Reed describes meetings between concerned parents, who wanted answers to the scientific findings they had uncovered about the dangers of puberty blockers, and gender clinic employees, who sought to sell them a lifetime of medical interventions. “The clinicians would dismiss the research that the parents had found and speak down to the parents,” Reed testifies. The facility exhibited a thorough “lack of regard for the rights of parents,” as “doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.” Clinic employees “would also malign any parent that was not on board with medicalizing their children,” says Reed.

That echoes the experiences of relatives in the documentary “Dead Name,” especially Helen, who was told to “celebrate” her child’s transgender identity after her former lesbian partner had introduced Helen’s four-year-old son, Jonas, to transgender ideology. Helen recounts that a parade of preschool officials and therapists presented her preschooler’s decision as a fait accompli. “They never said, ‘We need to talk about this,’” Helen says. “It was always edicts by email.”

Parents who resisted received the ultimate high-pressure sales tactic: “Experts” said they must approve their child’s gender transition or witness the child’s suicide. “A common tactic was for doctors to tell the parent of a [girl], ‘You can either have a living son or a dead daughter.’ The clinicians would tell parents of a [boy], ‘You can either have a living daughter or dead son,’” Reed testifies. The employees made these comments “to parents in front of their children,” which “introduced the idea of suicide to the children” — something that equally violates known research and medical ethics, Bauwens says.

“It is entirely inappropriate and unethical for anyone in my profession to plant the idea that an inevitable outcome will be suicide (even in the absence of expressed suicidal ideation) if the clinician’s counsel for gender-affirming care is not followed,” Bauwens told Nebraska legislators last week while testifying on behalf of Bill 574, the Let Them Grow Act, which would protect minors from transgender injections and surgeries. “This is blatantly manipulative and has no part in promoting psychological or relational health.”

It’s also erroneous. Numerous studies have found gender transition procedures do not help, and sometimes harm, patients’ mental health. “There are no reliable studies showing” a positive correlation between transgender injections/surgeries and improved mental health, Reed writes.

When parents still refused, or withdrew consent for, the procedures employees at the gender transition clinic continued the treatment, Reed alleges. They would even intervene in custody disputes against parents who disagreed with plans to transition their children. “One of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers,” Reed notes. But they also ignored the judges’ orders and sided with anyone who brought a child into the office for a gender transition. “I was told not to ask for custody agreements because ‘if we have the custody agreement, we have to follow it,’” Reed notes in legal documents.

To make matters worse many, perhaps most, of the young people who entered the university’s gender clinic had not experienced gender dysphoria at all, Reed states, but a form of social contagion. During her four years at the center, the total number of calls the center received increased between 400% and 800%, and girls began to outnumber boys. Traditionally, most cases of gender dysphoria involved males who identify as female. When she began, she heard about 10 calls a month from teenage girls who identified as male; that had increased five-fold by the time she left, with this cohort making up 70% of the center’s calls.

“It became clear that many children coming to the Center had gender identities that were likely the result of social contagion,” Reed writes. A 2018 study from Dr. Lisa Littman found that rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) can be “initiated, magnified, spread, and maintained via the mechanisms of social and peer contagion,” including peer pressure via online platforms. Reed concludes, “Social media is at least partly responsible for this large increase in children seeking gender transition.”

Yet the center lobbied these minors to begin puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones (typically testosterone injections) and ignored the side effects, Reed writes. “The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she says.

The industry is big business. “Certainly pubertal blockers could run thousands of dollars per month in out-of-pocket expenses,” says Dr. Michael Haller at the University of Florida’s department of pediatrics. Transgender surgeries are “a huge money-maker,” said Dr. Shayne Taylor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health in 2018.

The problems Reed identifies affect all cases of transgender identity, because ideological considerations have narrowed the medical standards and available “treatments” for gender dysphoria, Bauwens told The Washington Stand. “A multitude of treatments have been researched to help children through depression. Yet when it comes to gender dysphoria, there’s only one path currently being prescribed: that is to try to become someone else,” she told Nebraska lawmakers.

“These interventions are being endorsed based on consensus, not evidence: Practices were voted on rather than standing on the merits of solid research findings addressing gender dysphoria,” Bauwens noted. “The success rates for nonintervention for gender dysphoria already exceed most psychological interventions.”

Children need to be “protected from misdiagnosis and scientifically unsupported, highly invasive, and potentially irreversible interventions that will impact the rest of their lives.”

Surprisingly Reed — who says, “I support trans rights” — agrees. “Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria,” Reed concludes.

Lawmakers promise to act on the legally actionable items in her whistleblower testimony. “Accountability is coming,” Senator Hawley has promised.

But investigations and prosecutions cannot bring wholeness to the lives permanently altered by the gender transition industry.

“It’s important as others are affirming a false identity that we need to go out of our way, as parents and as a community of believers, to affirm our young people in who they are,” Bauwens told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last fall. “Transing a child is never the answer.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Utah Enacts Law with ‘Massive Loopholes’ for Minors Seeking Gender Transition Procedures

February 1, 2023/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research Council

If the point was grabbing headlines, Utah’s SB 16 has done the trick. More than a dozen outlets, from Fox News to Newsweek to CNN, described the bill Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) signed Saturday as a “ban” on “gender-affirming” procedures for minors. Unfortunately, the bill no more banned ideological experiments on children than cross-sex hormones are “gender-affirming.”

The bill imposed a “moratorium” on “hormonal transgender treatment to a patient who: (a) is a minor … and (b) is not diagnosed with gender dysphoria before the effective date of this bill.” But the moratorium will only last until the state Department of Health and Human Services conducts a “systematic medical evidence review,” the purpose of which “is to provide the Legislature with recommendations to consider when deciding whether to lift the moratorium.” The Health Department must submit its completed report to the legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, which is chaired by the bill’s sponsor.

It’s unclear how long the moratorium will remain in effect. A sunset provision in an earlier bill draft would have repealed both the evidence review and the moratorium in four years (on June 1, 2027), but it was stripped out by a voice vote on the House floor. The final version of the bill contains no timeline or end date for the evidence review; it could last for four years, or it could be done in less than four months. Once the evidence review concludes, the legislature will be free to replace the moratorium with the Health Department’s recommendation — which will likely permit gender transition procedures on minors.

The study will likely reach a pro-transition procedure conclusion because the Utah Health Department will conduct it “in consultation with” three state licensing agencies, the University of Utah, and a Utah hospital system. Even in deeply conservative regions, universities and hospital systems are often deeply invested in lucrative gender-transition procedures. The University of Utah also prescribes gender transition hormones to adolescents. “You don’t want people who stand to make money off of transitioning kids in charge of determining that this is a safe procedure,” Joseph Backholm, FRC’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, who has testified on SAFE Act-style bills before multiple state legislatures, told The Washington Stand.

Utah’s state agencies also support gender transition. During the period of the review, one involved agency, the Utah Division of Professional Licensing, will also be issuing “transgender treatment certifications” — essentially approving gender transition treatments for minors.

The Utah Health Department will find no difficulty in tipping the review towards the politically desirable outcome because “so much of the research is politicized,” said Backholm. A peer reviewed study published this month found that two studies which represent “the best available evidence for the practice of youth medical gender transition” are “methodologically flawed and should have never been used in medical settings as justification.” With the research playing to their bias, the Utah Health Department will find steering a scientific review towards their desired outcome to be easier than stealing futures from a child — which is exactly what they’re doing.

Even while the moratorium remains in effect, it won’t protect Utah minors from gender transition procedures. “Written into the law is a loophole so big that anyone who wants to get through it can,” Backholm told TWS. The law prohibits gender transition “surgeries and hormone treatments only until a minor is diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” Backholm explained. “These days, that is a very low bar.” All it takes is an “activist psychiatrist” willing to say that a minor has gender dysphoria, he said, and “everyone knows, ‘Hey, that’s the doctor you’re looking for.’”

Backholm compared the diagnosis exception to an abortion law with an exceptions for the “health of the mother.” Such a term is usually defined broadly to include mental health, which could include any form of stress, which telescopes the exception out to cover just about anything, he explained.

Nearly a quarter of the bill’s length is devoted to building an infrastructure to regulate the ongoing administration of gender transition procedures for minors. The bill directs the Utah Division of Professional Licensing to “create a transgender treatment certification” by July 1. It requires mental health professionals wishing to obtain this certification to complete “40 hours of education related to transgender health care for minors from an approved organization.” That requires the state to approve an organization with staff and curriculum providing training on transgender treatment of minors. It provides a system for individuals to renew their transgender treatment certification at the same time they renew their license to practice. Creating these new procedures hardly sounds like Utah intends to pause all gender transition procedures.

Utah established further transgender infrastructure via detailed treatment guidelines. To provide “hormonal transgender treatment” to a minor, a provider must first treat the minor “for gender dysphoria for at least six months,” including at least three sessions. The provider must “determine if the minor has other physical or mental health conditions” and consider whether “an alternative medical treatment … would provide the minor the best long-term outcome” (with the right activist, that answer is an automatic “no”). The provider must discuss risks, expectations, medical information, and “possible adverse outcomes” with the minor and his or her parents, and then obtain their consent. The provider must “document” this information “in the medical record.” Finally, the provider must obtain a mental health evaluation from a second credentialed provider — that is, from a second individual, who could work out of the same hospital or clinic. Far from obstructing gender transition procedures for minors, Utah Republicans seem to have merely regulated them.

The Utah legislature’s inaction appears more scandalous in light of the medical disclosures they require. Puberty blockers “are not approved by the FDA for the treatment of gender dysphoria,” people must say, who are prescribing them to minors for that very purpose. Not only that, but “possible adverse outcomes of puberty blockers are known to include diminished bone density, pseudotumor cerebri, and long term adult sexual dysfunction.” Oh, and there’s no “research on the long-term risks to children,” nor do we know “the full effects of puberty blockers on brain development and cognition.” That’s written into the law.

The medical disclosure for cross-sex hormones unveiled even graver consequences. For males, the risks can “include blood clots, gallstones, coronary artery disease, heart attacks, tumors of the pituitary gland, strokes, elevated levels of triglycerides in the blood, breast cancer, and irreversible infertility.” For females, the risks can include “erythrocytosis [a blood disorder], severe liver dysfunction, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and increased risk of breast and uterine cancers.” What is this, a commercial during a PGA tournament?

Somehow, Utah legislators acknowledged all these risks and concluded that it was fine for children to be exposed to them — so long as a couple of doctors filled out some forms and checked some boxes.

“This bill is politics,” said Backholm. “These legislators certainly heard from parents who are concerned about how this will affect children. [The legislators] want to tell the parents that they protected kids, but left a massive loophole written in the law. Politicians do this all the time.”

Utah’s feint against gender transition procedures stands in sharp contrast to bills introduced in other states, said Backholm, which say, physicians “may not do [gender transition procedures] under any circumstances.”

Backholm was concerned that other states would use Utah as an example simply because they got a good press cycle. “I am concerned that other states will see this as a way to quickly dismiss the issue, so they can tell the uninformed that they protected kids, without actually protecting kids.” Such a compromise is unacceptable.

Backholm said he is “inherently suspicious of Utah because they have mastered the art of compromise.” He said Utah moderates sold out conservatives by inventing the policy surrender known Fairness for All.

Governor Cox’s record is far from conservative on gender identity issues. In 2022, he vetoed a bill to protect women’s sports before the legislature overrode his veto. Yet Cox was willing to sign this bill on gender transition procedures. He described the weak measure as a “nuanced and thoughtful” strategic pause “as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.”

“More and more experts, states, and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences,” Cox said.

The question is, when will Utah?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Chloe Cole’s Detransition Story

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.