gender affirming care

On April 7, Wesley J. Smith appeared on Washington Watch with Tony Perkins to discuss the findings of a Finnish study that adolescents who received gender-affirming interventions suffered worse mental health outcomes, contradicting years-long claims that gender-confused children need gender-affirming care in order to avoid worsening mental health. Begins at 18:12

The ideological fever that pushed the transgender agenda to the forefront of Western cultural and political life has not broken. True, a jury awarded $2 million in damages for medical malpractice to a “detransitioner” woman who had a double mastectomy when she was only 16. And true, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the AMA now oppose transitioning surgeries for minors — meaning that such interventions can no longer be considered the “standard of care” for children experiencing gender confusion. That’s all to the good.

But: The Attorney General of California has sued a hospital that announced it would no longer perform “gender affirming care” on minors. Across the pond, the European Parliament just voted to declare men who identify as women to be women for purposes of discrimination laws — which, while non-binding in law, is expected to influence policies going forward. That’s all to the bad.

And now, a resolution has been introduced in Congress by Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) — along with scores of cosponsors — to establish a “Transgender Bill of Rights” that would undo all the recent gains that society has made to restore rationality to this most divisive controversy. Among other provisions, it would require that women’s private spaces be open to men who feel they are women, sweep aside religious objections to providing transgender medical interventions, and force women’s and girls’ sports to accept males as competitors.

From H. Resolution 1058, which already has many Democrat House sponsors and is supported by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey:

What do surgical interventions on people with sexual identity disorder actually do to the human body and are any of them reversible? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, host Arina Grossu Agnew sits down with Dr. Patrick Lappert, a twice board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon, former U.S. Navy Captain, and former Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Dr. Lappert spent more than 30 years in the operating room, including decades rebuilding bodies damaged by trauma, cancer, congenital deformities, and combat injuries. In this conversation, he explains in precise medical detail why surgical interventions on people with sexual identity disorder are cosmetic, irreversible, and ethically incompatible with basic principles of surgery, especially when performed on minors. In Read More ›

In this episode, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter reveals the truth behind one of the most controversial practices in modern medicine: the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on children with sexual identity confusion. He also outlines the disturbing legacy of John Money, the man whose unethical experiments helped launch today’s gender ideology. With over four decades of clinical experience, including training at Johns Hopkins and service in the U.S. Navy, Dr. Van Meter explains how chemical and surgical interventions on children with sexual identity disorder swept through pediatrics despite a lack of scientific evidence, how clinics rapidly adopted irreversible interventions, and why so many doctors feel pressured to “affirm” rather than question. Dr. Van Meter shares: He Read More ›

What happens when the medical establishment stops protecting children — and starts encouraging medicalizing sexual identity confusion instead? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, Dr. Jill Simons, a board-certified pediatrician and Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians, exposes how ideology has overtaken science and good medicine in the treatment of children with sexual identity disorder and how this puts vulnerable kids at risk. Dr. Simons shares how her decades of experience in pediatrics led her to speak out against sex-rejecting interventions on children with sexual identity disorder — interventions which are not compassionate and leave lifelong physical and mental consequences. We discuss: Dr. Simons explains why she believes children deserve truth, not a pathway to sex-rejecting transition. Watch Read More ›

The New England Journal of Medicine continues to besmirch its once august reputation by pushing ideology rather than medical science when discussing our nation’s most contentious social issues. This is particularly true about so-called gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender confusion. Even as repeated medical studies undercut the ideological narrative that puberty blockers, hormones, and even surgeries are the best means of caring for dysphoric children — and as country after country severely restricted those interventions — (with the exception of an unsubstantive criticism of the Cass Review) articles in the NEJM on the question usually pretend that the pushback never happened.

Now, the editors have done it again, publishing an article by Scott Skinner-Thompson, an LGBT activist law professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder, criticizing the Supreme Court for allowing Tennessee to legally prevent such interventions in children. The pretense begins with the headline, “The Faulty Logic behind the Supreme Court’s Failure to Protect Trans Minors.” To the contrary, Tennessee and other jurisdictions that have enacted such laws have done so to protect trans minors from potentially irreversible harm, in the knowledge that most gender dysphoric minors overcome their confusion by the time they reach adulthood.

Then, Skinner-Thompson leans on clearly ideological opinions by medical associations, despite at least one of which (WPATH) having been substantively discredited:

On June 18, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal treatment for transgender minors against an Equal Protection Clause challenge in United States v. Skrmetti. Transgender adolescents who need these medical interventions but live in one of the many states that ban them may need to look elsewhere for care. Nearly every major relevant U.S. health care organization has concluded that the prescription of hormones and puberty blockers for treating gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents is often medically appropriate in that it can improve mental health and well-being, whereas untreated gender dysphoria can lead to depression, anxiety, and suicidality.

President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its Covid failings, allegations of being soft on China, and the disproportionate share of funding borne by the United States. There is even more wrong in how WHO leaders have wielded their influence. In recent years, the organization has not just been about promoting public-health internationally, but also in using its clout to impose woke cultural agendas on the world — including areas that have traditional moral values — and in seeking to construct an international technocracy. Item: WHO sought to force a radical abortion regime on the world by allowing abortion through the ninth month and curtailing the right of conscience by doctors to Read More ›