Last month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) became the first major medical organization to denounce the practice of performing “gender-affirming care” procedures on minors. ASPS represents over 90% of all practicing plastic surgeons in the United States and Canada. In a statement to Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute, ASPS shared that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.” They further acknowledged that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”
“Calling the evidence for youth gender transition ‘low quality’ is not, as some gender clinicians say, a ‘scary buzzword’ intended to ‘confus[e] non-experts,” Sapir explained. “In evidence-based medicine, ‘low quality’ evidence means something very specific: that the true effect of an intervention is likely to be markedly different from the results reported in studies.” (emphasis added)
The growing list of risks associated with gender transition procedures for minors includes infertility, sexual dysfunction, severe regret, impaired brain development and cognitive function, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and worse. These serious risks are rightfully raising ethical concerns among medical professionals. The “low quality” nature of the evidence has introduced uncertainty about “whether the long-term benefits outweigh the harms.” Many European nations have already placed restrictions on these experimental procedures and have refocused on prioritizing psychotherapy for gender-dysphoric individuals.
Despite clear evidence that “gender-affirming care” procedures are experimental at best, and deadly at worst, over 3,000 minors in the United States underwent transgender procedures in a five-year period.
“Transgender advocates repeatedly claim that minors only take ‘puberty-blocking’ drugs or cross-sex hormones, but never undergo surgeries in an attempt to force their male or female bodies to resemble the opposite sex, yet a new study estimates that more than 3,000 minors underwent transgender surgeries in a five-year period, and more than 400 of them had their genitals removed,” the Daily Signal reported.
As more evidence comes to light about the politically motivated push for medical organizations to support “gender-affirming care” procedures for minors, new polling data reveals that young men and women have vastly different views on whether or not children should be able to identify as transgender without parental approval. According to the Wall Street Journal, men between the ages of 18 and 29 are in opposition by a margin of 33 points. While young women are divided on the issue, they are more in favor of allowing children to identify as transgender without their parent’s consent by a two-point margin.
Public perception of the transgender debate is heavily influenced by the opinions of major medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, which currently supports gender transition for minors. For the public to finally realize the true danger of allowing children to follow the path of gender transition, we need more medical organizations like ASPS to stand up for biological reality and evidence-based practices. Gender dysphoria is a mental health condition that should be solved through psychotherapy, not radical and destructive gender transition procedures.
