It has been increasingly obvious in recent years that American legislation regarding chemical and surgical sex change treatments for adolescents is far more permissive than any regulation in Europe.
Nonprofit healthcare watchdog Do No Harm reported that out of 11 European countries, the United States has the weakest child protection procedures in place for medical transition services.
In this analysis of policy stances, the United States emerged as the country with the most progressive attitudes on the medical and legal reassignment of a child’s gender.
Transgender adolescents in the United States are more likely than their European counterparts to have unrestricted access to gender transition therapy such as gender clinics, puberty blockers, cross-sex drugs, and operations.
In most of the United States, a minor needs written consent from a parent or legal guardian before a pharmacy would fill a prescription intended to postpone puberty (even as early as eight years old). Those of legal age in Oregon can buy puberty inhibitors without first consulting a parent or legal guardian.
It is noted in the report that in several European countries, a minor needs parental consent before using medicine to delay puberty. However, if your parents are on board, you can apply as early as 16 years old. Sweden and Finland have a minimum employment age of 13, while Denmark and Ireland set it at 15.
In eleven developed Western and Northern European countries, the use of cross-sex hormones is prohibited until the age of 16, following the completion of psychotherapy. In the United States, cross-sex hormones can be used in clinical research with volunteers as young as 13. This is in contrast to the majority of other nations.
European nations do not provide treatments for children without parental authorization due to limits created by current national health care systems. No nation in Western or Northern Europe permits gender-related treatments on kids under the age of 16 or 18, whichever comes first. Reportedly, patients as young as 12 years old have undergone breast reduction surgery in the United States.
While the United States has hundreds of teenage gender clinics, Europe has far fewer. Teenagers can have chemical and surgical sex change treatment at these facilities and doctors’ offices.
The group’s chairman, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, blames rigid gender dogma for the United States’ dissent from the growing international consensus. Medical boards in states like Florida and others have concluded that allowing minors to practice medicine might have more harmful than good consequences. Children receiving gender-affirming surgery were declared illegal, prominent transgender clinics were forced to shut, and fewer transgender people had access to hormone therapy.
Pediatricians Goldfarb and Grossman penned a commentary for the New York Post saying that “the evidence verifies such wisdom.” It has been shown in several studies that a person’s gender incongruence often improves or vanishes by the time they are an adult.
He stated that the phenomenon of transgender self-identification among young individuals, especially among adolescent girls, was too unique to be explored, much less medicalized, due to the lack of data.
As part of its mission to educate policymakers and the general public about the “catastrophic repercussions of the unproven and usually destructive procedure known as ‘gender-affirming treatment,'” Do No Harm has launched a new campaign called Protecting Young People from Gender Ideology.