A month ago, my colleague told you about the lawsuit brought by Clementine Breen against doctors Johanna Olson-Kennedy and Scott Mosser, as well as St. Francis Memorial Hospital. As a 12-year-old girl, Clementine was given puberty blockers. That progressed to cross-sex hormones at 13 and a double mastectomy at 14.
As noted in that aforementioned article (emphasis original):
Ms Breen’s story starts early in the 2016-17 school year, when she turned 12. She felt depressed and sought help from a guidance counsellor. 'I mentioned that I might be trans,' she recalled in the interview, 'but I also mentioned that I might be a lesbian and that I might be bisexual, like I wasn’t really sure about my identity at all.'
Ms Breen and her lawyers claim that despite the vagueness of her musings about her identity, her counsellor fixed on the possibility that she was transgender ... With the support of her school, Ms Breen, who went by the name Kaya at the time, changed her name to Kai and her pronouns to he/him. Her parents took her to the CHLA gender clinic, and Ms Breen’s first appointment there, records show, was in December 2016.
Dr Olson-Kennedy’s notes from that first visit show that she immediately set Ms Breen down a path towards medical transition. She writes that Ms Breen had not yet seen a gender therapist and had come out as trans three months earlier. Nevertheless, she asserts that Ms Breen meets the specific Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria for gender dysphoria, one of which, she writes, is a cross-sex identity that has lasted for six months or longer.
This is an abhorrent violation of Breen's bodily autonomy and basic medical principles.
Breen was not 'assigned' female at birth. She was female from conception, when genetics determined she had two XX chromosomes.
As Breen herself admitted, she was a 12-year-old who was depressed. Rather than addressing her mental health issues, the school pushed her into the 'care' (I use that term loosely) of Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who went on to diagnose Breen with 'gender dysphoria.'
Breen changed her mind -- as most kids with 'gender dysphoria' do once they go through puberty. But the damage is done.
Part of why Kamala Harris lost the election was the Left's radical embrace of this gender ideology, with a happy assist from the media. Because they are incapable of introspection and have learned nothing from that electoral defeat, they will continue to double down on so-called 'gender-affirming' care for youth.
This article from NBC News is proof they aren't giving up the trans issue without a fight:
I'm going to highlight some of the article, with added emphasis, because I want you to pay attention to what the article is actually saying beyond the headline.
Most major medical organizations in the United States support gender-affirming care for minors. The American Medical Association, which publishes JAMA, has referred to the care as “medically necessary.”
Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, who is the director of education and training at the LGBTQ health care organization Fenway Health and is not affiliated with the study, said he is “not surprised” by the findings, because access to transition-related care is limited.
“This particular type of care, there is such a bias against providing, that I would suspect not every transgender or gender-diverse youth who would have benefited from it in this dataset necessarily received it,” he said. “I see that in practice in the communities that we work with, even in privileged communities with private insurance. There could be a lot of barriers at the family level, at the practice level to that kid getting gender-affirming care.”
On the surface, the article seems to be minimizing the number of kids receiving puberty blockers and hormones (more on that in a second).
But the buried lede here is NBC News and Dr. Keuroghlian are arguing there would be MORE trans kids, but they're being denied care.
Holy cow.
I understand that NBC News has few ethical standards beyond being a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party, but the two 'barriers' they mention -- family and medical practitioners -- actually do. Parents who oppose 'gender-affirming' care for their kids are protecting them from the obvious harm such treatment causes. Doctors, unlike journalists, actually have ethical standards they have to follow. Failing to do so, as the lawsuit mentioned above proves, has consequences.
And the science is not on the Left's side here.
Back in July, the U.K. High Court ruled a ban on puberty blockers was lawful. J.K. Rowling noted the severe, dangerous side-effects of the puberty blocker Lupron, as I wrote about here. I also wrote about how here in the U.S., the FDA admitted puberty blockers are dangerous, but recommended them anyway.
As I noted at the time:
A leading endocrinologist with the Food and Drug Administration recommended pursuing approval for puberty blockers for youth with gender dysphoria despite acknowledging that they raised the risk of depression and suicidality, according to internal emails.
Shannon Sullivan, the clinical team leader at the FDA’s Division of General Endocrinology, recommended to her supervisor in January 2022 that the agency approve puberty blockers to treat adolescents with gender dysphoria following a safety review that showed negative mental health results.
On top of the increased risk of depression and suicidality, there is no evidence puberty blockers are -- as the Left claims -- completely harmless and reversible.
The side effects of Lupron alone prove that first claim wrong. Another report from the Mayo Clinic reports puberty blockers cause withering testicles, infertility, and cancer. In other words, not reversible. Boys who take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones often end up with micropenses and are unable to function sexually. Girls are often rendered infertile. This has lifelong implications for relationships.
I did some stupid things as a kid, things that (thankfully) caused no lasting damage. I cannot imagine being allowed to take dangerous medications or have my breasts removed at 14, and having to live the rest of my life with a body that is mutilated, infertile, sexually dysfunctional and at-risk for cancer. We don't let 14-year-olds get tattoos, we don't let them vote, drink, buy guns, or even buy cigarettes.
Now let's circle back to the math. This will surprise no one, but that math is dishonest, and meant to hide the real numbers behind a percentage. Hoping that most Americans won't (or can't) crunch the numbers, NBC News is banking on the headline to minimize the problem. That way they can argue it's not as widespread as we think (regardless of what they think the cause of that is).
But 0.1% of adolescents is roughly 40,000 young men and women.
That is a lot of young men and women who, like Clementine Breen, will likely outgrow the 'gender dysphoria' phase. But, for Breen, the damage is done: she does not have her natural breasts, and no surgery can reconstruct them.
And NBC News thinks the problem with 0.1% of adolescents being prescribed those puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is not enough children have access to them, and that some sort of bias is to blame.
