By Jonathon Van Maren
Lifesite News

March 15, 2023

The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (NHIB) is the latest European body to announce that the so-called “affirmative model of care” for gender dysphoric minors is not supported by evidence and is advising against the use of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and “sex change” surgeries for minors. The NHIB recommended that these “treatments” be classified as experimental and noted that the spike in children identifying as transgender is concerning.  

“The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge, for gender confirmation treatment (hormonal and surgical) is insufficient,” the report notes. “Little is known about the long-term effects.” Instead, the NHIB recommends that more data — especially follow-up data — be collected and noted that the current standards endanger children, who cannot consent to the irreversible impacts of these treatments. Media reports indicate that the new recommendations come after families complained about “safety, lack of parental involvement, and lack of follow up for underage patients.”  

In the United States, legislatures passing laws restricting the use of the “affirmative model” are being condemned by trans activists and leftist legislators as an extremist right-wing campaign targeting “transgender youth,” but the global scene actually indicates that countries like the U.S. and Canada are increasingly out of step with the medical conversations taking place in other countries. Norway is only the latest to condemn sex changes and cross-sex hormones for children.  

In the U.K., the Tavistock gender clinic was shut down after an investigation by the National Health Service concluded that the standard of care there endangered children and released recommendations opposing the medicalization of childhood in most instances, going so far as to strongly caution against “social transition” as confusing and likely to impede natural desistance as time goes on. 

In September 2021, over 50 medical professionals, prominent academics, legal experts, doctors, philosophers, psychiatrists, judges, and psychoanalysts in France published a scathing open letter condemning aspects of gender ideology and “gender transition” in children. Published through the Observatory of Ideological Discourses on Children and Adolescents, the letter laid out their concerns—and was almost totally ignored by the international press. American and Canadian newspapers have no desire to cover a debate that exposes how out of step we are. 

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