By Laurel Duggan
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced sweeping new restrictions on sex change procedures including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in a Monday press release.
Bailey issued an emergency regulation clarifying that gender transition interventions are “experimental” and therefore subject to existing state law requiring strict guardrails, particularly in the form of more rigorous informed consent procedures, according to the release. His office is currently investigating the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital following whistleblower allegations that the clinic was rushing children into gender transitions with insufficient mental health screening, sometimes against the wishes of parents.
“As Attorney General, I will protect children and enforce the laws as written, which includes upholding state law on experimental gender transition interventions,” Bailey said in the press release. “Even Europe recognizes that mutilating children for the sake of a woke, leftist agenda has irreversible consequences, and countries like Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom have all sharply curtailed these procedures. I am dedicated to using every legal tool at my disposal to stand in the gap and protect children from being subject to inhumane science experiments.” (RELATED: ‘Horrifying’: Huge Proportion Of Children Pursuing Gender Transitions Are Actually Autistic, Experts Believe)
In an effort to protect children and enforce the laws as written, I am issuing an emergency regulation clarifying that, because gender transition interventions are experimental, Missouri law already prohibits performing them in the absence of specific guardrails.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) March 20, 2023
Existing Missouri law requires certain guardrails for experimental procedures; in the case of gender transitions this means patients must be informed that the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transitions is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that puberty blockers can lead to brain swelling and blindness and that Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare has declared that the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the benefits, according to the release. Patients must also be informed that people with at least one transgender friend are 70 times more likely to themselves identify as transgender and that most prepubertal children with gender dysphoria diagnoses outgrow it by adolescence.
Bailey also determined that existing law bans gender transition procedures when a provider fails to first provide a mental health evaluation consisting of at least 15 sessions over 18 months to assess and treat mental health comorbidities, track adverse outcomes, obtain written informed consent, screen patients for autism and ensure on an annual basis that a patient is not experiencing social contagion related to their transgender identity.
A spokesperson from Bailey’s office did not directly comment on the extent to which existing gender clinics would be impeded by the move, but said a “vast amount” of procedures aren’t complying with those guidelines.
