Global Courant
European countries are hesitant to approve gender reassignment services for minors, even as the US medical community has pushed ahead with the practice despite ethical concerns.
The US is now an outlier on transgender issues as America’s national medical groups urge lawmakers and regulators to not only allow but encourage gender transition services for minors who say they may be transgender.
While the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway and France all allow puberty blockers and gender transition surgeries, medical professionals there are pushing back their use in children, according to the Wall Street Journal. For example, in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service announced a rollback of the availability of hormone treatments, limiting them to clinical trials only.
“These countries have conducted systematic reviews of evidence,” Leor Sapir, a fellow who studies transgender care at the Manhattan Institute think tank, told WSJ. “They have found that the studies cited to support these medical interventions are too unreliable and the risks are too serious.”
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Medical institutions in the US fully support gender transition services for minors, but European medical professionals are hesitant. (Getty)
Republican lawmakers in the US have cited the hesitation of European medical institutions in their own calls for more scrutiny on the issue. Texas Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw demanded answers from assistant professor Meredith McNamara of the Yale School of Medicine on the matter at a congressional hearing last week.
“If you’re doing therapy, and it’s, you know, temporary, fine, whatever, maybe let’s try it and see if it works,” he continued. “But when you talk about permanent physiological changes, don’t you agree, just from an ethical point of view, that you want extremely strong evidence of benefits? There’s no systematic review stating that there’s strong evidence of benefits. “
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“Sir, do you know how the Quality Evidence Review System works and how it is applied?” McNamara responded, without citing specific studies after the two went back and forth.
“You don’t tell me research, don’t say ‘standards of care,'” Crenshaw insisted. “Tell me one.”
McNamara couldn’t. Nevertheless, Democrats on Capitol Hill and across the country have pushed ahead to set gender transition services for minors in stone.
“They tell parents that Republican politicians know better than they do what’s best for their child,” Representative Frank Pallone Jr., DN.J., said at the same hearing. “This is the height of hypocrisy from a group that supposedly believes in limited government.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw cited Europe’s hesitation about transgender care for minors at a congressional hearing. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Global Courant
More than a dozen Republican-led states, including Texas, have already taken steps to ban or limit the use of puberty blockers on minors.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter at Fox News Digital covering national politics and major news events. Send tips to [email protected], or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
