Parents put their transgender kids on puberty blockers, and on the road to sex changes, because they are falsely told by healthcare providers that if they don’t, their kid will be more likely to commit suicide. But that isn’t true, puberty blockers actually increase the risk of suicide. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reports Just the News.
Jazz Jennings was the poster child for child sex changes, with a TV show focused on celebrating Jazz’s sex change. But Jazz ended up miserable as an adult, saying “I don’t feel like me, ever.” Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they said. But that was very misleading.
Just the News reports:
Five months before the Food and Drug Administration issued a health warning on puberty blockers widely used off-label to treat minors with gender confusion, undermining a Department of Health and Human Services office that claimed “early gender affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being,” an FDA leader acknowledged other health concerns.
Pediatric patients exposed to “gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists,” most with central precocious puberty (CPP) and “a handful … transgender kids using the drugs off-label,” had an “increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk,” Division of General Endocrinology clinical team leader Shannon Sullivan told colleagues.
The 2017 safety review by the FDA’s Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology Products (DMEP), cited by Sullivan, contradicts claims by American medical groups and Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine that gender affirming care is “suicide prevention,” as the government’s highest-ranking transgender official said at the 2022 Out For Health Conference.
It also undercuts Sullivan’s own call to approve puberty blockers for “gender transition” in the same Jan. 25, 2022, email chain.
Kids aren’t the only ones at risk, according to an study in April by University of Texas Medical Branch researchers in the peer-reviewed journal Cureus, which found gender-affirming surgery in adults is “significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks.”
Yet, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — of which the FDA is a part — has promoted gender transitions for minors, including puberty blockers. “Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine promised that medically changing kids’ genders will soon be normalized,” reports Fox News.
The Biden administration has promoted the use of puberty blockers for children as part of “gender affirming care,” even though the FDA had earlier publicly warned that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
But overseas, even left-leaning governments recognize that this is an extreme position that is not supported by scientific evidence. Britain’s Labour Party government, which supports LGBTQ rights, is welcoming a recent court ruling that upheld restrictions on using puberty blockers to treat children with gender dysphoria. Those restrictions were imposed earlier this year by Britain’s Conservative Party government, before voters replaced it with a Labour Party government in the 2024 elections.
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan notes, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” are now recommending against “prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors.”
Yet, in America, gender clinics are giving teenagers double mastectomies and other sex-change operations in many states.
As the New York Post notes, many girls who get sex changes will “struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors.” They temporarily identify as transgender boys, then get sex changes before realizing they are really just girls:
The number of girls temporarily identifying as “transgender” has skyrocketed. Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to describe this subset of transgender youth, typically biological females who become suddenly dysphoric during or shortly after puberty. Littman believes this may be due to adolescent girls’ susceptibility to peer influence on social media.
A variety of studies suggest that as many as 80% of dysphoric children could ultimately experience “desistance”— or coming to terms with their biological gender without resorting to transition. Which is why many professionals like Evans think it’s wise to hold off on potentially irreversible medical intervention for as long as possible….All these treatments run the risk of side effects that critics argue are too serious for children to fully understand. In the short term, puberty blockers can stunt growth and effect bone density, while the long-term effects are still unknown since they were only approved by the FDA in 1993. Side effects of testosterone include high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots and even infertility.
Sex-change procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort. For example, after Jazz Jennings’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, Jazz experienced pain, constant reflux, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness (Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11).
The unsatisfying nature of sex changes was conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy. And It Shouldn’t Have To.” That’s because of the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed:
Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to.
Chu still wants the sex change, but doctors don’t have magical powers, so “sex change” surgery can’t really give transgender people the body they want. So Chu won’t be happy, even after receiving the sex change. The suicide rate of transgender people actually rises after they get sex changes, as a think-tank had already pointed out way back in 2018.
“Gender-affirming surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks,” according to a recent study that was published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science. Hot Air sums up this peer-reviewed study as finding that “suicide risks” are “1200% higher after gender-affirming surgery.”
