French senators are urging the protection of children under 18 from hormone drugs and surgical procedures following the release of a report that says current medical treatments for gender dysphoria in minors may constitute “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine.”
Led by a working group of the center-right Les Republicains (LR) opposition party, the report asserts transgender medical practices involving young people are influenced by ideological activists who are engaged in an indoctrination and propaganda campaign on social media to encourage sexual surgeries among children.
A translation of the French report via DuckDuckGo’s app indicates the LR working group conducted 67 hearings that included “doctors and medical teams in France and around the world” and also heard the concerns of associations, institutions, and parents.
Many of those who participated in the hearings, the report states, “question medical, social, educational and legal practices in this area.”
“It appears that the trend in many areas today is to treat young people … as capable of self-determination,” the report notes, observing that while some parents “encourage their children’s self-determination,” others are “concerned about rapid social or medical transition of the child.”
The hearings also revealed the “pressure” experienced by some parents when “transgender medicine” professionals “encourage them to accept and support their child’s medical transition, at the risk that he or she will suicide.”
“The important question that arises is the age at which a minor is capable of consenting to medical treatment that will necessarily have a significant impact on his or her life emotionally as well as sexually,” the working group observed. The group also raised alarms about the increasingly scrutinized informed consent process for young people targeted for sexual surgeries.
Earlier this month, leaked internal files from the U.S.-based World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) – the leading organization of transgender medical professionals – revealed some of the organization’s doctors admitting children and teens are not developmentally capable of comprehending the devastating long-term effects of the drugs and surgeries that are recommended for them. As a result, young people are incapable of “informed consent” to the procedures.
Other concerns spelled out in the French report involve the lack of long-term studies on the effects of hormone drugs and the claim by LGBTQ activists that the effects of such drugs are reversible:
Several critical international studies point to adverse effects of puberty blockers, which have not been sufficiently researched on their long-term impacts. The reversibility of treatments does not seem to be as proven as prescribers claim. On the other hand, the side effects are well known. A number of experts interviewed, particularly those from abroad, considered that the current treatment guidelines did not meet the required standard of care in the forensic field, in terms of compliance with methodological standards.
The report recommends assessment for the “presence of psychopathological and/or neurodevelopmental disorders” and calls for, “as a first step, psychiatric and/or psychotherapeutic care for the child and his or her family.” Both practices take a starkly different path from activists’ demand that children immediately be “affirmed” in their “new” gender identity.
Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, an LR senator who led the working group that commissioned the report, said “fashion plays a big role” in the surge of gender transition medical treatments, the Telegraph reported.
Considering this trend and the potential risks involved, Eustache-Brinio added, the “sexual transition of young people will be considered as one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine.”
LR senators are now seeking to introduce a bill by the summer that would effectively ban, in France, the prescription or administration of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to young people under the age of 18, the Telegraph noted.
The French senators’ move comes as the protective fortress surrounding transgender ideology appears to be cracking. Two weeks ago, England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced children will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers in gender identity clinics in that country.
“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty-suppressing hormones to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” the new NHS guidelines say, per The Times.
Referring to the change as a “landmark decision,” Health Minister Maria Caulfield said the government “welcomes” it as a move that “will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”
The NHS’ Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, had previously been ordered to shut down in 2022 after an independent review led by UK pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass recommended its closure.
Cass not only observed a lack of study of the long-term effects of puberty blockers and hormones on still-developing children but also recommended that treatment for gender dysphoria emphasize mental health services instead of medical intervention.
While the United States federal government is lagging behind England, France, and several other European nations that are backing away from subjecting children to hormone drugs and gender transition surgeries, nearly half of the nation’s individual states have passed legislation protecting young people.
On Friday, Wyoming became the 24th state to protect children and teens from life-changing drugs and surgeries, the effects of which, according to the leaked WPATH files, even some transgender medical professionals admit among themselves young people cannot fully comprehend.
Wyoming’s Senate File 99 overwhelmingly passed both chambers of the state legislature and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Mark Gordon. The new law bars “physicians from performing procedures for children related to gender transitioning and gender reassignment.”
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