Protect Good Medicine, Stop the Censorship of Good Counseling

Oct 22, 2020 by

by Ryan T Anderson, Public Discourse:

The law must protect the freedom of parents to seek, children to receive, and doctors to practice good medicine. The law must protect the ability of doctors and families to help children feel comfortable as what they actually are—namely, male and female children—not to radically and irreversibly transform their bodies.

An increasing number of children, both here in America and around the globe, are experiencing deep discomfort, confusion, and alienation from their sexed body, a condition known as gender dysphoria. Unsurprisingly, people disagree about how best to respond to this condition in order to help these kids. How we navigate that disagreement will prove critical.

Some people insist that the proper course of action involves experimental interventions directed at the boy or girl’s body itself—puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. Others suggest that therapy be directed to the child’s thoughts and feelings, not the body.

Physical interventions on minors to “affirm” a mistaken “gender identity” violate sound medical ethics and should be prohibited. And yet, in all fifty states, such interventions are entirely legal.

At the same time, a more radical movement is seeking to make it illegal to use a psychological approach to help these children rather than a hormonal and surgical one. An increasing number of jurisdictions—both in the US and in other countries—are banning therapy that aims to help minors with gender dysphoria feel comfortable about their own bodies without transforming their bodies. Federal legislation has been introduced that would create nationwide censorship of such therapy, and the UN has claimed that such therapy violates human rights.

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