American Society of Plastic Surgeons Backs Away From Supporting ‘Transgender’ Surgeries
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) is no longer marching in lockstep with other U.S. medical groups that support transgender medical interventions for minors, reports Leor Sapir in an article titled, “A Consensus No Longer.”
Writing at City Journal, a conservative public policy magazine published by the Manhattan Institute, Sapir states:
In July, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a major medical association representing 11,000 members and over 90 percent of the field in the U.S. and Canada, told me that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria.”
He adds:
ASPS acknowledged that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”
BREAKING: The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, an organization representing 92% of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., becomes the first major medical association to break from the consensus over “gender-affirming care” for minors.
This is big news.
— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) August 12, 2024
The pullback by a major American medical group is a blow to transgender activists and their allies, as Sapir explains, “The main justification for ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors in the United States has been that ‘all major U.S. medical associations’ support it.”
Sapir says this is the “first big fracture” in “the U.S. consensus” about treatment for minors with sexual identity confusion. That supposed consensus has prioritized experimental and harmful interventions for children, including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.
The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) is a transgender activist group that publishes Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People. The Standards of Care are then used by medical groups to promote harmful interventions. Insurance companies, courts, and federal, state and local governments have also relied on the Standards of Care.
The guidelines have no minimum age requirement on experimental, body-damaging medical interventions such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. In its “Summary Criteria for Adolescents,” the WPATH’s Standards suggest that for an adolescent to undergo surgery, he or she should demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment.”
But an investigative report of the organization made clear:
WPATH-affiliated doctors are “fully aware” that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming care,” and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents.
Sapir writes, “The U.S. is one of the few Western countries where minors can receive gender surgeries. As a result, thousands of adolescent and teen girls have had double mastectomies, removing healthy breast tissue, in an attempt to make them look like boys.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that gender-affirming surgeries tripled from 2016 and 2020, adding, “Breast and chest surgery was the most common class of procedures performed overall.” During that time period, 3,215 children, ages 12-18, had these surgeries. The report says that 405 children had genital surgery and 350 had other cosmetic procedures.
Sapir gives more recent numbers:
A new analysis by the Manhattan Institute, using a more up-to-date all-payer national insurance database from 2017 to 2023, found evidence of 5,288 to 6,294 “gender-affirming” double mastectomies for girls under age 18. This includes 50 to 179 girls who were 12.5 or younger at the time of their procedure.
He adds that those numbers are probably underestimated, as they only cover part of 2023 and include procedures covered by insurance.
As recently reported in the Daily Citizen, Dr. Hilary Cass, a former president of the U.K.’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS England to review and recommend “how to improve NHS gender identity services.”
In a letter accompanying the report, she writes about medical interventions for young people confused about their sexual identity:
This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.
Despite this “weak evidence,” thousands of children have been irreparably harmed by transgender medical interventions.
Children who are confused about their sexual identity or who reject their bodies don’t need surgery or powerful drugs and hormones. They deserve love, support and guidance to embrace their God-given masculinity or femininity.
Let’s pray that other medical organizations follow the ASPS and back away from irreversible, body-altering procedures.
For families and individuals struggling with transgender issues, Focus on the Family offers a one-time complimentary consultation from a Christian perspective. We also offer referrals for licensed Christian counselors in your area.
To reach Focus on the Family’s counseling service by phone, call 1-800-A-Family (232-6459) weekdays 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Mountain Time). Please be prepared to leave your contact information for a counselor or chaplain to return a call to you as soon as possible. The consultation is available at no cost to you. You may also reach our counselors online by filling out our Counseling Request Form.
Related articles and resources:
Focus on the Family:
Becoming the Woman God Made Me to Be
Counseling for Sexual Identity Concerns: A Measured, Careful, and Compassionate Approach
The Journey Back to My True Identity (Part 1 and Part 2)
Daily Citizen:
Questioning Drugs, Hormones and Surgery for Youth Confused about Their Sexual Identity
U.K.’s Review of Child Gender Policy Reveals Profound Failures That U.S. Still Defends
The WPATH Files Expose ‘Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children’
The WPATH Files – Transgender Interventions Are ‘Unethical Medical Experiments’
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Johnston is a culture and policy analyst for Focus on the Family and a staff writer for the Daily Citizen. He researches, writes and teaches about topics of concern to families such as parental rights, religious freedom, LGBT issues, education and free speech. Johnston has been interviewed by CBS Sunday Morning, The New York Times, Associated Press News, The Christian Post, Rolling Stone and Vice, and is a frequent guest on radio and television outlets. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from San Diego State University with a Bachelors in English and a Teaching Credential. He and his wife have been married 30 years and have three grown sons.
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