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Utah bans gender-affirming care for minors, restricts puberty blockers, hormones, and body mutilation

January 29, 2023 | | Print Article

Thanks to Gov. Spencer J. Cox’s signature, Utah has become the first state to ban so-called “gender-affirming care” (puberty blockers, surgery, etc.) for minors.

“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 in a statement Saturday.

Correct. This is especially so in Europe, where nations like the U.K. and Sweden have all pulled away from “gender-affirming care” for minors because of the inherent risks.

Why is the U.S. so behind in this regard? Because its European counterparts admittedly got a 10-year head start on this contentious debate.

“The U.K., along with other European countries, started widespread use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children identifying as transgender almost a decade before clinics opened in the U.S. for the same purpose,” The Heritage Foundation noted in a report published last year.

“With that extra decade of experience, European health officials have accumulated more evidence of the long-term damage being done and have started to reverse course,” the report accurately continued.

For example, last summer the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) ordered the shuttering of its only so-called “gender identity clinic” for children.

“[F]ollowing a review commissioned by NHS England and led by Dr. Hilary Cass, a consultant pediatrician, the Tavistock clinic will now be shut down over concerns for the safety of children,” The European Conservative reported.

The review by Cass found, among other things, that several doctors at the clinic had felt “pressured to adopt an unquestioning approach” when dealing with children who allegedly suffer from gender dysphoria.

“[T]his is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they [doctors] have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters,” the review reads.

This exact same phenomenon is playing out across the entire United States, with therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, doctors, surgeons, etc., all being pressured to just accept it when a child claims they’re of another gender.

The result has been the same as in the U.K.: children have been misdiagnosed as transgender and rushed into unnecessarily transitioning to a new gender.

The results in the U.K. were so bad that lawsuits are now expected.

“The Tavistock gender identity clinic is facing legal action over claims children were misdiagnosed and rushed into transitioning at a young age. … Staff, patients and parents have raised concerns that young people using the service were put on the pathway to transitioning too early and before they had been properly assessed,” The Independent reported last August.

“It is alleged children were ‘rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers without adequate consideration or proper diagnosis,’ with staff under pressure to adopt an ‘unquestioning affirmative approach.’ Mass legal action is now being pursued by lawyers against the clinic, named the Gender and Identity Development Service (GIDS), which has treated 19,000 children with gender dysphoria since 1989.”

Similar lawsuits are beginning to crop up across the states.

In November, for instance, then-17-year-old Chloe Cole filed an intent to sue against a California health care company for “breaching the standard of care” by recommending puberty blockers for her when she was just a teen.

“Chloe is a biological female who suffered from a perceived psychological issue “gender dysphoria” beginning at 9-years-old. Under Defendants’ advice and supervision, between 13-17 years-old, Chole underwent harmful transgender treatment, specifically, off-label puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment, and a double mastectomy,” according to her attorneys at the Dhillon Law Group.

“Throughout Chloe’s medical experience in California, the facilities and institutions actively promoted, encouraged, and advertised the availability of these treatments. Chloe and her parents were not informed of the option for psychiatric treatment or an approach that attempted to treat the underlying psychological conditions to bring about a mental state congruent with Chloe’s biological sex.”

In fact, the law in Utah was reportedly inspired in part by Chloe’s story:

She’s one of thousands of detransitioners who’re beginning to speak out publicly as the stigma of detransitioning fades away and American society comes to accept that puberty blockers and surgery aren’t the be and end all for kids suffering from gender dysphoria.

Vivek Saxena
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