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The left loves to push transition narratives.
Until people who have transitioned regret their choice and transition back.
Then, progressives ignore or outright dismiss their once-beloved darlings.
All because de-transitioners’ stories argue powerfully for extreme caution when it comes to offering radical hormone and surgery treatments for kids who may just be a little anxious, depressed or confused.
And for holding culpable the doctors and other health professionals who push such extreme, permanently life-altering treatment.
One case that may change all that is playing out in California: Kayla Lovdahl, now 18, is suing her former doctors and two hospitals that oversaw her procedures when she went under the knife at just 13.
“Around age 11,” the suit claims, “Kayla was exposed to online transgender influencers who prompted Kayla to entertain the erroneous belief that she was transgender.”
After only one “75-minute transition evaluation,” doctors put her on “puberty blockers and testosterone at age 12, and performed a double mastectomy within six months at age 13,” the lawsuit charges.
At 17, Lovdahl realized she wasn’t trans and began detransitioning — but her body had been irreversibly changed.
By doctors who spent an hour and fifteen minutes examining her before setting her on a life-altering course of drugs and surgery.
That’s not medical care: It’s ideology masquerading as science.
Nor is Lovdahl the only young person who’s gone public with such regrets about transitioning as a child.
Chloe Cole, now 18, was put on years of puberty blockers and underwent a double mastectomy at 15. Luka Hein, now 21, received the same surgery at 16.
Both now publicly advocate against transition procedures for children.
And Hein also claims doctors ignored her mental health as they pressured her into transitioning.
The data is clear: Somewhere between 63% and 94% of gender-questioning kids eventually grow out of it.
That’s nearly two-thirds at the low end.
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Putting kids under the knife when they’re likely to feel differently about their bodies in a few short years is madness.
And of course outsiders — friends, peers, social media, “experts” — can convince children that they’re transgender.
Kids are impressionable; especially in adolescence, their sense of self is in constant flux.
That’s why countries across Europe are making a hard course correction on pediatric “gender-affirming care” — a euphemism, as our Douglas Murray notes, for child butchery.
Britain and Sweden, hardly hothouses of intolerance, have limited puberty blockers to children enrolled in clinical trials. Finland requires at least six months of psychotherapy and the support of family members (among other qualifications) before a minor can access hormonal treatments.
Health organizations in France and Norway — again, countries famed for their social liberalism — are also advocating for a cautious approach to gender-related care for minors.
The United States should follow suit. It’s not a partisan issue, it’s a moral one (and the science backs up the Europeans’ caution).
There’s simply no good evidence supporting the claims of radical activists that puberty blockers and surgery for kids can save lives or even improve mental health.
So it’s duty of parents to step in and prevent children from making life-altering decisions that will permanently scar their bodies before they can even get a learner’s permit.
Other countries already know this. America must catch up. And doctors who keep pushing these radical treatments against all the dictates of science should face consequences.
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