Gender Medicine Is on the Ropes
The left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse, Donald Trump declared in a 2024 campaign video. On Day One, Trump vowed, he would sign an executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. He would also ask Congress to ban child sex-change procedures, prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to promote or pay for these procedures in adults, support the creation of a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have unforgivably performed these procedures on minor children. He pledged to unleash the Department of Justice to investigate Big Pharma and the big hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients.
Demonstrating how even gender ideology s critics have been conditioned to use its language, Trump said that he would ask Congress to pass a bill declaring that there are only two genders, which are assigned at birth. Presumably, he meant two sexes, which are determined at conception and recognized at or before birth.
Assuming that these are not empty promises, Trump s victory in November poses a serious threat to the gender medicine industry. That industry, however, was already on the defensive on the eve of the presidential election. Since 2021, 24 states have passed laws banning the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for youth who feel discomfort with their sex. An additional two Arizona and New Hampshire have prohibited the use of surgeries, but not hormones. A challenge to one of these laws, from Tennessee, is on the Supreme Court s 2025 docket. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, will determine how states can regulate gender medicine and, with its 6 3 conservative majority, the Court likely will rule in Tennessee s favor.
Nearly two dozen de-transitioners young men and (more often) women who were given drugs and surgeries, only to realize later that what they really needed was counseling and time to mature are now suing their doctors and clinics for medical mistreatment. Though these lawsuits are tough to win, even a single multimillion-dollar verdict or out-of-court settlement could send malpractice insurance premiums soaring and create a chilling effect in states where gender-affirming care remains legal.
The gender medicine industry s most powerful argument that kids will commit suicide without access to gender-affirming care suffered another serious blow in February, when a Finnish study found that gender-dysphoric minors and young adults suicide risk, while higher than the general population s, was still thankfully low. Crucially, the study was the first of its kind to control for psychiatric comorbidities. The researchers found that gender-dysphoric young people were not statistically significantly more likely to commit suicide relative to non-dysphoric individuals with similar levels of psychiatric problems. In other words, comorbid mental-health challenges, extremely common in gender-dysphoric youth, explain that population s elevated suicide risk not gender issues per se. At the oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, Chase Strangio, the ACLU s star transgender litigator, admitted that suicide among trans-identified youths is thankfully and admittedly rare. Admittedly?
Leor Sapir.