Dozens of doctors, profs sign statement pushing 'gender affirming medical care' for minors

On Mar. 27, dozens of professors and doctors signed a statement condemning laws restricting gender surgery and therapy for minors. 

Signatories emphasize two points in their statement: “First, there is consensus in the field, and amongst these signatories, that gender affirming medical care is important and beneficial for many transgender youth. Second, we do not support laws restricting access to gender affirmative care. As with all medical care, we believe an adolescent’s health care, including their access to gender affirming medical care, should be determined by the youth along with their families and health care teams.”

”We write this letter to make our position on this crystal clear,” continues the letter, “The signatories below all believe, based on the current evidence, that gender affirmative medical care is an important part of many transgender adolescents’ overall care, and that states and health systems should not restrict access to that care.”

Signatories included figures such as Marci Bowers, who is the president-elect of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). He was also featured in the Matt Walsh film “What is a Woman?”

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Bowers said in a recent opinion piece that the laws being passed banning minors from accessing gender care around the country “will harm - not protect - children.”

Diane Chen, a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, also signed the statement. Chen has been in charge of a study that was criticized for having no control group in measuring the effect of cross-sex hormone treatment on youth.

Chen is now part of another study, called “A Longitudinal Study of Gender Nonconformity in Prepubescent Children” and supported by the NIH, looking at the effects of the social transition of kids as young as six years of age. 

David Inwads-Breland also signed the statement. He is a professor at the University of California San Diego Medical School and was a part of a study researching the mental health effects of hormone treatments.  

Later reports revealed that the data in the study did not back up the claims of positive mental health outcomes originally put out by the research team. 

Although all the professionals signed the statement, many “are involved in debates about how best to care for transgender and gender diverse youth” and some have concerns about gender treatment as practiced in the United States. 

One clinical psychologist who signed, Erica Anderson, told Campus Reform, “There was a recent piece in Reuters where the reporters contacted eleven youth gender clinics and they asked them directly: ‘Do you ever on the first visit ... recommend the initiation of medicines?’, and seven of the eleven said they did … I don’t think fifteen, twenty minutes is enough time to properly evaluate something as serious and consequential as a gender change.” 

“I have said that clearly there is peer influence in almost every way with adolescents, and so why would we think that there is no peer influence when it comes to formation of identity and gender issues?” Anderson continued. 

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Chloe Cole, a de-transitioner and prominent advocate against gender care for minors, told Campus Reform, regarding the signed statement, “The gender affirmative care model has NOT been proven beneficial for children and teens.” 

“As a patient who has been harmed by these practices as a child, I find it offensive that physicians turn a blind eye to patients like me … No parent, no physician, and no adult has any right to subject a child to a radical experimental course of treatment that needlessly interferes with their physical, psychological, and sexual development,” Cole said.

Campus Reform contacted the parties involved in the report and it will be updated as needed.