23 September 2022- Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-33) said today he will soon introduce legislation prohibiting pediatric gender transition surgeries as part of his efforts to protect Pennsylvania’s children from the unintended consequences of fringe progressive ideologies.
“These experimental medical procedures risk the health and wellbeing of our children,” Mastriano said. “I can’t stand by as medical providers across the country cave to the pressures of militant leftists committed to distorting the concept of gender so that it defies the bounds of science and logic.”
So far, Tennessee lawmakers have also announced plans to approve similar legislation in 2023. This comes three months after the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) recommended hormone treatments in children as young as 14 and surgeries – including double mastectomies, hysterectomies and testicle removal – between the ages of 15 and 17.
“Kids are being coached into life-altering decisions without any evidence to support the safety or efficacy of these so-called treatments,” Mastriano said. “The medical community’s rush to embrace these procedures is disturbing and compels action from lawmakers to protect gender-questioning children, not experiment upon them.”
In support of the proposed legislation many point out that WPATH is an interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ activist organization “supporting trans health” with outsized influence in the United States. The UK, France and other countries have been putting out a call for more caution on medical interventions for children under 18 being treated for gender issues in the past 9 months as better and longer term studies are revealing less benefits and greater mental health risks in affirmative-only treatments.
Other more cautious approaches are being taken in these countries as it’s become clear there has been an explosion of adolescents, especially females, suddenly identifying as trans or non-binary over a short number of years, that has all the indications of being social contagion rather than authentic gender dysphoria. The lack of study for why this is happening, the negligence in treating concomitant mental health issues and studies showing spikes in suicide years after transition surgeries all point to the need for more caution many medical professionals and groups are warning. Sweden has officially ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors under age 18 this year and the UK, France and other countries are increasing prohibitions on the use of medical interventions for gender treatment for younger patients.
