WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A coalition of medical professionals and organizations spanning multiple faiths and disciplines released a new declaration calling on American medical authorities to withdraw their support for “transitioning” gender-confused minors in the face of overwhelming evidence that such practices pose grave, lifelong harms to children’s physical, mental, and emotional health.
At a June 6 press conference in the nation’s capital, the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) announced the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration, which implores the American Academy of Pediatrics, Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry to “adhere to evidence-based research and utilize comprehensive evaluations and therapies for youth with gender dysphoria” in light of “recent research and the revelations of the harmful approach advocated by WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) and its followers in the United States.”
The signatories urge establishment medical associations to “follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex” and return to “identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria.”
The declaration has the endorsement of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, American Association of Christian Counselors, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Catholic Medical Association, Coalition of Jewish Values, Genspect, National Association of Catholic Nurses, Discovery Institute, Family Research Council, National Catholic Bioethics Center, and more than 100 medical professionals and leaders on gender and family issues.
The full declaration, available on the Doctors Protecting Children website where medical professionals, academics, detransitioners, and concerned citizens alike can add their signatures, extensively details the state of medical knowledge on the subject and how the medical establishment has responded, including the UK’s recent Cass Review that prompted the British National Health Service to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children, and the leaked WPATH Files revealing “gender-affirming” doctors privately admitting they knew cross-sex hormones were far more dangerous than they let on in public.
“It is time that these American medical institutions follow the science and the lead of our European professional colleagues and cease to promote protocols that harm children, including the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex,” ACPeds executive director Dr. Jill Simons said.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners” like Mosley, individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
Some such physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with a 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
ACPeds has also created another website, Biological Integrity, that is full of resources for teens, parents, doctors, teachers, and more for understanding and overcoming gender confusion, including studies, frequently asked questions, personal accounts from detransitioners, relevant state laws, and information about finding responsible treatment options.