Friend or Foe: Which best describes Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper and Dr. Erica Anderson? Part 2

In Part I, I recapped Laura Edwards-Leeper’s contribution to the surge of children being subjected to gender interventions, as well as her attempts to reign in the automatic affirmation and medicalization of every child who says she is transgender.

I received a comment that I was being harsh and that “Everyone Needs a Laura” spends hours with her adolescent clients and writes 30-page reports, implying that she is one of the good ones. An analogy immediately popped into my head:

If a Nazi leader pulled 30 Jews out of the line to the gas chambers, should he be lauded as a hero, or would he have been just as guilty of crimes against humanity as the Nazi that killed 100% of his prisoners?  Perhaps, the 30 who survived may call the Nazi a savior, yet surely the relatives of those he killed would call him a murderer.

In my mind, the most culpable are those who know what they are doing is wrong but do it anyway because they cannot admit their participation in the horror. If you have witnessed, as I have, the pain of the parents and detransitioners over the last four years, you too would grant no absolution to Edwards-Leeper as she continues to approve children for irreversible secondary sex characteristic modifications.

Dr. Erica Anderson is a male who has been “living as a woman” for more than a decade. In 2011, at the age of 60, he medicalized after divorcing his wife.  He admits that he is male but wants to be treated as a woman. 

I confess that when I first met Dr. Anderson at Jesse Singal’s “meet and greet” in San Francisco, I thanked him and broke down in tears. My emotions were genuinely of gratitude; the same gratitude that I had for Laura Edwards-Leeper after their joint op-ed, because they were willing to, at the very least, raise the alarm about children being transitioned with no exploratory mental health assessments. 

My current feelings for him are extremely complicated because our paths cross frequently, and I find him to be very intelligent, affable and gentle. We previously communicated regularly with thoughtful banter, and he is rightly very proud of the work that he is doing to protect the parent-child relationship and as a whistleblower. (He no longer contacts me, likely because I am disrespectful for refusing to use feminine pronouns for him. I respect females too much to capitulate.) We cheered each other on as our work was publicized. He understands the parent conundrum and has empathy for us.  Also, Anderson is fearless in his willingness to voice his opposition to the nullification of parents in the decision-making process related to their gender-confused children through his expert testimony in the school-related cases.    

The Good

Because he is living as a woman, he avoids the “transphobic,” “right-wing,” “bigot,” and “hateful” labels given to the non-trans-identified doctors, and therefore he has an outsized voice. Anderson has used that power for good in many lawsuits in the United States, and with great success for the parents.  He is fearless in his affidavits and briefs in cases involving schools secretly transitioning students behind the parents’ backs. Undoubtedly, some of these cases would not have been successful without his participation. 

Anderson continues to act as an expert despite the nasty vitriol from his former colleagues. Anderson is considered a traitor among his former WPATH and USPATH teammates. Anderson advocates that parents must be involved in the critical decision of whether to socially transition their child (permit the child to mimic living as the opposite sex). He recognizes that social transition can tip the scale towards persistence of what would have been an ephemeral identity.

Some of his erudite quotes are: 

·       “A request to change name and pronouns may be the first visible sign that the child or adolescent may be dealing with gender dysphoria or related coexisting mental-health issues.”  (Mirabelli v. Olson, 3:23-cv-00768-BEN-WVG (S.D. Cal. Sep. 14, 2023). 

·       “A school-facilitated transition without parental consent interferes with parents’ ability to pursue a careful assessment and/or therapeutic approach prior to transitioning, prevents parents from making the decision about whether a transition will be best for their child, and creates unnecessary tension in the parent-child relationship.” (Mirabelli case.) 

·       “To place teachers in the position of accepting without question the preference of a minor and further direct such teachers to withhold the information from parents concerning their minor children is hugely problematic.”  (Mirabelli case.)

·       Trained psychotherapists should not drive a wedge between a parent and their child as social transition can only occur with “the support and acceptance of parents/caregivers.” (TF v. Kettle Moraine School District, Waukeshe County Circuit Court, Case No. 2021CV1650, Order dated 10/3/2023.) 

·       “Circumventing, bypassing, or excluding parents from decisions about a social transition undermines the main support structure for a child or adolescent who desperately needs support.” (TF case). 

Anderson has also publicly raised concerns for gender-confused young adults who reach the age of 18. He stated in his 2022 SF Examiner op-ed, “the fact that specialty clinics care for patients into their twenties confirms what most understand: Turning 18 does not mean one attains adult competency — particularly for life-altering medical decisions like gender transition.”   

Anderson also very publicly snubbed the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and USPATH, the United States’ arm of WPATH when he resigned after the groups directed members to cease speaking to the media.

Anderson is one of the few gender mental health providers that understands the connection of same-sex attraction with those adopting a transgender identity, the under-counting of those who regret their transition, and the effect of social media on the surge of minors claiming to be transgender.

I personally know that Anderson has helped some youth to accept their natural bodies. One such parent was relieved when Anderson announced that her son was not “transgender,” even though she already knew that.  But the announcement did help her son desist by bolstering the parent’s belief, and one more child was saved.

The Bad

Anderson was the President of USPATH and a board member of WPATH from 2019 to 2021. Both of these groups continued to press medical providers to offer irreversible medical interventions on children. Also, during his tenure, Anderson was an expert for the ACLU’s case challenging Indiana's prisons refusal to provide all of the gender interventions the male prisoners requested. He advocated for using taxpayer dollars to provide gender treatments to men in prison which would then provide a faster avenue for them to be transferred into the women’s prisons, so they can terrorize the females.  See Monroe v. Jeffreys, No. 3:18-CV-00156-NJR (S.D. Ill. Feb. 4, 2021).

The Ugly

Despite having heard from the world’s experts during the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine’s conference in October of 2023, where Dr. Rittakerttu Kaltiala of Finland, Sallie Baxendale, Ph.D. of the UK, Dr. Stephen Levine and Zhenya Abbruzzese of the United States spoke about the lack of evidence that medicalizing children with gender confusion is beneficial, Anderson continues to vehemently advocate for children to undergo these monstrous irreversible procedures. He has 40 years of clinical experience and has somehow forgotten that children’s brains do not mature until between ages 23 and 30.  The fact that “adolescents appear to focus more on the immediate benefits (a socioemotional brain system function [that develops during puberty] than the future costs of risky behavior (a cognitive-control brain system function [that matures in the mid to late 20s], a finding that is exacerbated in the presence of peers” has been ignored when Anderson permits a child, even one who has undergone a long period of therapy, to decide to transition. 

Anderson supported the United Nations’ change from using the term “gender identity disorder” to “gender incongruence.”  This alteration in the lexicon converted the rejection of the body from a psychological pathology to a natural and normal occurrence.  It is not.  The mind and the body are one. While it is true that some humans have always wanted to take on the cultural or stereotypical attributes of the opposite sex, no one has a gendered soul that belies the body.  

Anderson, along with Edwards-Leeper, jointly filed an amicus brief in the Skrmetti case that is currently before the Supreme Court.  Amicus briefs are filed to influence the court with facts that may not be before them from the lower court’s records.  Anderson advocates for the Supreme Court to rule that Tennessee’s law, which prohibits any interventions on children that alter their secondary sex characteristics, including puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones and surgical removal or alterations of fully functioning and healthy breasts, ovaries, penises and vaginas, is unconstitutional. 

Below are some excerpts from that brief, along with my clarifications:

“For patients denied access to critical care, serious adverse health consequences may result.”  

These “patients” are CHILDREN.  The “serious adverse health consequences” is not passing as the opposite sex. Anderson is also implying that the children will kill themselves if not able to receive irreversible medical treatment to alter their bodies to mimic another sex.

“[T]here is a broad consensus that access to gender-affirming medical care is important and appropriate for some youths, and conversely that state legislation categorically banning such care is unwarranted and dangerous.”

That there is broad consensus is untrue. As Europe halts so-called sex-changes on children, only those profiting from the children’s confusion, and who need affirmation that their own predilection for mimicry is “normal” believe children should be robbed of their healthy bodies. 

Is it really dangerous to permit a child to go through natural puberty, a development stage that has been occurring as long as humans have been on earth?  Is it really dangerous to let a healthy body develop without introducing puberty blockers that adversely affects cognitive development, bone density, sexual function and have never been approved for gender dysphoria?  Is it really dangerous not to subject a young male to estrogen to ensure his sterility? Is it dangerous not to place a young female into menopause, cause her vocal cords to thicken, increase her chances of cancers, heart attacks and a whole host of other side-effects that we are just learning about.  (Anyone else notice the number of young women on testosterone using canes or wheelchairs?)  

“Notwithstanding Amici’s emphatic opposition to bans on gender-affirming medical care, the State’s experts and amici have sought to invoke their work in support of SB1. For example, in the district court, Tennessee submitted an expert declaration by Stephen B. Levine, M.D., in support of its brief in opposition to a preliminary injunction of SB1, in which Dr. Levine cited to Amici’s work in at least eight different paragraphs without ever disclosing that Amici categorically oppose bans on gender-affirming medical care like SB 1.” 

Despite Anderson’s knowledge, he cannot admit that what he did while he was a clinical psychologist at University of California, San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital and its Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic, was wrong.  To do so would require him to admit that his desire to be seen as a woman is a psychological disorder and he cannot quite get there, at least not yet.

I will not be surprised if as he gets closer to his final days on this earth he will admit that he has regret in transitioning “100s of children” without any follow-up. I hope that it happens before then, because his voice is extremely important. I believe in my heart of hearts that he knows transitioning children is wrong, but the self-reflection may be too much to bear.

Is Anderson a friend or foe? Certainly this other Our Duty member says foe, as do I.

The only good gender doctor is the one who helps children and adults return to comfort in their natal sex and refuses to approve life-altering medical treatments.

Republished with permission from Our Duty.