Puberty Blockers

Medical conscience is under sustained assault as doctors are being threatened with societal punishment or professional discipline for refusing to provide controversial but legal interventions such as abortion, euthanasia, and gender transition against their religious or moral beliefs. Now, a British Columbia doctor has been fined $28,100 for refusing to administer puberty blockers to a child based on his religious and moral objections. From the CBC story:

The decision describes Child Q, the 14-year-old at the centre at the decision, as a “brave, sensitive, kind transgender girl.”

It says in late 2020, she came out as transgender and struggled with her mental health as she entered puberty. Ajaero referred her to the B.C. Gender Clinic, where an endocrinologist prescribed Lupron, a medication that pauses puberty.

According to the decision, Child Q describes the day she started the medication as “one of the best days of my life.”

Lupron needs to be injected every three to four weeks. It can be injected at home, but according to the decision, Child Q and her family preferred to have it done by a doctor.

Her first appointment to get an injection at her family doctor’s was March 5.

The decision said when Ajaero learned that the shot was Lupron, he told Child Q’s mother he would not be administering it.

“He explained this was for religious and cultural reasons, and he hoped that was OK. Mother Q said it was not OK.”

Ajaero’s charting notes from the appointment said: “I noticed that the injection is for gender re-assignment as patient is already in the waiting room with [her] mother. I called mother into the room and explained to her that I would not be able to give the injection. Based on my religious belief and cultural background.”

Wesley J. Smith appeared on the Vicki Mckenna Show on August 28, 2026, to discuss the debates occurring in bioethics and medical journals to make previously unthinkable things acceptable and regularly practiced. For instance, they discuss how treating gender dysphoria in young children with puberty blockers was once unthinkable, but after being debated in the professional journals, it has been widely accepted. Now, bioethicists are proposing that the “dead donor rule” should be done away with in order to harvest organs. Read “‘Death by Organ Donation’ Pushed in Prestigious Medical Journals”

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus famously wrote that bioethicists “professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as the unexceptional.”

He was right. Radical bioethical policies don’t just appear like magic out of the ether. Controversial—even pernicious—ideas are often debated in bioethics and medical journals where few among the public ever see them. Then, if a general consensus is reached within the field, policies once considered “unthinkable” are “suddenly” elevated into the justifiable and become unexceptional public policy.

Here are just two examples. Legalizing assisted suicide was once way beyond the pale. Then, bioethicists began arguing in favor of such laws, after which hastened death became debatable, then justifiable, and now, in many jurisdictions, so unremarkable that many thousands of people have died by that method.

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 ›

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.

The American medical establishment remains radically committed to the misnamed “gender-affirming care” model, refusing to even consider following the examples of the U.K., Sweden, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, France, Norway, and others whose health ministries have hit the brakes hard on providing puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries to gender dysphoric children.

Example: The current New England Journal of Medicine published a “Perspectives” screed attacking the Cass Review — widely respected for its thorough investigation of the lack of significant data supporting puberty blocking of gender dysphoric children. From “The Future of Gender Affirming Care“:

Our concern here is that the Review transgresses medical law, policy, and practice, which puts it at odds with all mainstream U.S. expert guidelines. The report deviates from pharmaceutical regulatory standards in the United Kingdom. And if it had been published in the United States, where it has been invoked frequently, it would have violated federal law because the authors failed to adhere to legal requirements protecting the integrity of the scientific process.

The tide is really turning against the gender ideologues who advocate experimenting on the bodies of children as a supposedly “medically necessary” treatment. Now, Italy’s National Bioethics Committee has recommended substantially ending the use of puberty-blocking drugs as a “treatment” for childhood gender confusion. From the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine’s press release: Excellent. If the government follows the advice of its bioethics commission, Italy will join a burgeoning list of countries — which includes the U.K., France, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, and Denmark actively taking steps to end the madness. Once the execrable Admiral Levine is out of office as Trump reenters the presidency, I expect the U.S. to follow suit. That will leave the American medical establishment and a short Read More ›

It is increasingly clear that there is little scientific basis for administering puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric youth. Consequently, many European countries have now effectively banned their use outside of official studies. Now, the New Zealand Ministry of Health has similarly found that there is a “dearth” of evidence supporting blocking normal adolescence in youngsters who feel that their gender is different from their sex. The New Zealand study reviewed all the literature on the question published before September 30, 2023. In other words, it was a study of the findings of published studies. First, it found that studies claiming that puberty blockers helped ease depression were of very poor quality. From “Impact of Puberty Blockers in Gender-Dysphoric Adolescents” (my emphasis): Impact of puberty blockers on Read More ›