Why “Gender-Affirming Care” Isn’t Just a Problem for Kids
To say that so-called "gender-affirming care" should be restricted for children but allowed for adults is a failure in both logic and ethics
Confused children often grow up to be confused young adults
This argument rests on the assumption that an adult’s legal right to consent absolves the medical profession of its most fundamental obligation: to do no harm.
But consent alone does not erase a physician’s duty to practice evidence-based medicine. Nor does it justify irreversible procedures that lack long-term data, are driven by ideology, and in many cases, worsen the patient’s underlying mental and physical health.
Medicine Is Not a Vending Machine
When doctors perform irreversible surgeries or prescribe powerful, lifelong medications with known risks and no genuine, substantially proven long-term benefit, especially in cases where psychological comorbidities are ignored, they are not practicing medicine. They are participating in ideological reinforcement at the expense of their patient’s long term physical and mental well-being, and often on the taxpayer’s dime.
It is irrelevant if an adult consents to sterilization or bodily mutilation. Informed consent for a “sex change” is not truly possible when it is beyond the scope of medicine to actually change anyone’s biological sex. At best, medicine can provide cosmetic procedures and drugs to help someone appear more like the opposite sex, but this does not meet the definition of medically necessary and has not proven to cure the underlying mental disorder. Therefore these elective, experimental procedures should not be covered by insurance. Furthermore, medicine is not a vending machine for harmful interventions. It is a profession bound by scientific integrity, ethical standards, and a duty of care.
When physicians comply with requests that violate those principles—particularly when those requests stem from psychological distress rather than physiological disease—they are complicit in a growing medical scandal. This is the real issue: not age or “bodily autonomy,” but the collapse of medical standards in the name of ideology.
Unproven Experimentation at Any Age
Drawing the ethical line at age 18, as if unproven medical experimentation suddenly becomes moral at the moment of legal adulthood, is intellectually dishonest. Medical ethics and scientific standards don’t expire on one’s 18th birthday.
There’s a vast difference between consenting to cosmetic surgery and consenting to the removal of healthy reproductive organs, chemical sterilization, and lifelong synthetic hormone dependency. These procedures are often promoted as “safe, effective, and reversible,” yet the side effects are not only risky, they are often devastating, disfiguring, and even deadly.
In no other branch of medicine do patients dictate their own care based on self-defined identity alone. Adults, like minors, are entitled to well-documented, peer-reviewed, double-blind, long-term, evidence and outcome-based medical care. Doctors do not affirm anorexia with liposuction, nor do they affirm body integrity identity disorder with amputations. The same ethical standard must apply to gender distorting medicalization.
The Evidence Is In: Regret and Suicide Risks Are Real
You’ve likely heard the refrain that regret is “rare” and that gender medicalization prevents suicide. But the evidence now tells a different story.
The National Database Study (U.S., 2025)
• 107,000 individuals with gender dysphoria were analyzed.
• Those who had surgery experienced higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use over two years post-op compared to matched peers.
🔗 PubMed
A Review of 49 Studies Found:
• Post-operative trans individuals were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than matched controls. (This was not a before/after comparison—it compared post-surgery individuals to the general population.)
• Transgender US military veterans have more than 20 times higher rates of suicide-related events than cisgender veterans.
• The prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts varies by sample, with the prevalence of suicidal ideation sometimes as high as 50-75%.
• Rates of attempted suicide can reach peaks of 30% and above
• Transgender individuals are also at increased susceptibility for various suicide risk-enhancing factors, as a growing body of literature suggests that transgender individuals face a high burden of chronic health conditions, psychiatric illnesses and their comorbidities, substance use…
Other Key Studies of Note:
• 22% in a qualitative cohort reported regret and felt that medical transition was the wrong pathway for them.
🔗 Link
• In a UK clinic, 6.9% detransitioned within 16 months, with another 3.4% showing signs of detransition.
🔗 Link
• In another UK practice, 12% of patients on hormone treatment detransitioned or expressed regret over five years.
🔗 Link
More Data:
• 5.3% of youth stopped blockers/hormones and reverted to birth sex.
• 29% stopped hormones or changed transition direction within 2 years.
• 29% in military healthcare ceased hormones within 4 years.
Another Place to Find Articles of this Nature is at:
🔗 The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine
These studies disprove the claim that regret is rare or that gender medicalization prevents suicide. In fact, the opposite is often true. These interventions increase mental health risks—and we now have the data to prove it.
The Autism–Gender Dysphoria Link
Diverging Minds: The Puzzle of Identity and Neurodiversity
Another rarely discussed risk of supporting gender medicalization—for both children and adults—is its disproportionate impact on autistic individuals.
There’s been an alarming trend in recent years: many “quirky” or socially struggling individuals are being overdiagnosed with autism, (from 1 in 10,000 in the 1980’s to 1 in 36 today,) and many that are said to be on the spectrum are now being swept into the trans identity/medicalization pipeline.
Key Findings:
• A 2022 meta-analysis found that 11% of people with gender dysphoria also had an autism diagnosis.
🔗 PubMed
• A scoping review estimated autism rates in gender-diverse people ranged from 1.2% to 68%, with a pooled estimate around 11%.
A Northern Ireland clinic found:
• 19.5% scored high on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ)
• 25.4% on RAADS-14
• 35.8% scored low in empathy (possibly indicating coexisting NPD or cluster B traits)
• 17.2% showed overall elevated autistic traits
🔗 PubMed
• An Australian Trans 20 cohort showed 45.8% with autistic traits via SRS-2
• A UK dataset of 600,000+ individuals showed that 24% of gender-diverse people were autistic, vs. ~5% of cisgender people.
This 2024 study among autistic individuals found:
• 13–20% identified as gender-diverse—many times higher than in the general population.
🔗 Springer
This overrepresentation cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. Vulnerable populations—especially autistic individuals—are being over-medicalized, pathologized, and transitioned without adequate safeguarding.
Conclusion: Medical Ethics Must Be Equally Upheld for Everyone, Regardless of Age
The medical profession must justify every intervention with sound research, robust data, and long-term outcomes. Otherwise, it is not medicine—it is ideology wrapped in a lab coat.
Children are not the only ones harmed by unproven, irreversible interventions. So are adults! And some are particularly vulnerable due to developmental variation or underlying mental disorders.That is why the same standards must apply to all:
• Double-blind, long-term studies
• Full, transparent disclosure of side effects
• Comprehensive non-affirming mental health evaluations
• Ethical thresholds that prioritize healing, not profit
Until these standards are met, gender medicalization should not be practiced on anyone, be they children or adults. To say that so-called gender-affirming care should be restricted for children but allowed for adults is a failure in both logic and ethics. Intentional iatrogenic harm for profit should not be promoted or justified for adults any more than for children.
Summary:
In the face of rising rates of regret, detransition, and co-occurring conditions like autism, we must critically reevaluate the current trajectory of gender medicalization. True compassion demands caution, especially when lifelong consequences are involved. Every person, without regard of age, deserves ethical care rooted in sound evidence, not ideology. It's time we return to first principles: do no harm.
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Exactly: "Medical ethics and scientific standards don’t expire on one’s 18th birthday." Thank you for this article.
It's mind boggling that the cross sex sterilizing hormones prescribed to my vulnerble son with autistic traits at 19 on his first visit to Planned Parenthood is not worthy of criminal prosecution. In four years, he has deteriorated mentally and physically. No one at any age should be harmed by unethical damaging drugs and barbaric surgeries.