By Joe Carter, TGC.
The Story: Within days of each other, the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons have issued recommendations that gender-related surgeries for minors be deferred until adulthood.
The Background: The American Medical Association (AMA) has historically supported a broad range of so-called gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents, including social transition, counseling, puberty blockers, and hormones. As recently as 2023, it reiterated and even strengthened that support. But in its new policy statement, the AMA says that “surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.” Their recommendation is based directly on the limited research on risks and benefits.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) went even further, issuing a position statement recommending that breast and chest, genital, and facial gender-related surgeries be delayed until at least age 19. The ASPS—the largest professional body of plastic surgeons in the country—cited “insufficient evidence” and “low certainty” about the risk-benefit profile of these procedures for patients under 18. ASPS leaders said their shift was influenced in part by England’s landmark Cass Review and the 2025 U.S. Health and Human Services report on pediatric gender dysphoria, which found the overall quality of evidence supporting these interventions to be “very low.”
These shifts are converging from multiple directions. Earlier this month, a woman who underwent a double mastectomy at age 16 as part of a gender transition won $2 million in damages against her medical providers. According to the Washington Times, this was the “first time a jury has ruled in the case of a detransitioner suing over gender-change procedures performed before age 18.”
Over the past two years, at least 27 U.S. states have enacted bans on some or all forms of gender-transition treatments for minors. The Supreme Court also upheld Tennessee’s law restricting such treatment. And last year, President Trump signed an executive order banning federal funding for institutions that provide such treatment to people under 19.