I didn’t say it, Britain’s National Health Service did. The Telegraph reports:
Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.
NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.
Not only are surgery and puberty blockers out, the NHS is even recommending against milder measures:
NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.
The NHS notes a 40-fold increase in use of “gender identity services” over the last decade. The service announces a different approach to treating young people, noting “evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and pointing out that “doctors should be mindful this might be a ‘transient phase’”.
The move is aimed at taking a more “holistic” approach to treating children and looking at the reasons why they are questioning their gender.
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Rather than being delivered by therapists and hormone specialists, the new clinical teams will include experts “in paediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health”.The proposals note that a “significant proportion of children” who are referred for treatment have neuro-development issues or family or social problems.
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NHS England will also “strongly discourage” young people from buying hormones from private clinicians and will not accept clinical responsibility for the treatment of those who have done so.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. the carving up of children proceeds apace. This is reminiscent of the abortion issue, where supposedly more permissive European countries have, in fact, more reasonable abortion laws than the radically permissive ones that have been enacted in many blue states.
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