Win for kids! Major surgeon group reverses course, comes out against child genital mutilation



Gender ideologues' false narratives and monstrous practices were never a match for common sense, close scrutiny, and ethical review. Nevertheless they were championed in recent years by radical politicians, educators, health professionals, and clerics at the expense of confused minors and mentally compromised adults.

It appears that at least one major professional medical association that previously supported so-called "gender-affirming care" is belatedly correcting course in the wake of a federal crackdown, an overwhelming shift in public opinion, and proof that the sex-rejection regime is vulnerable to civil lawsuits.

'Plastic surgeons should adopt a posture of heightened caution ... recognizing that their role is not simply technical but ethical.'

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a group founded in 1931 that represents over 11,000 physician members, claimed in 2019 that it firmly believed "that plastic surgery services can help gender dysphoria patients align their bodies with whom they know themselves to be and improve their overall mental health and well-being." The ASPS further criticized Republican-supported restrictions on so-called "gender-affirming care."

The surgeon group signaled a major change of heart on Wednesday in a policy statement regarding its views "on breast/chest, genital, and facial gender surgery for individuals under the age of 19."

The ASPS noted that in recent years, "a number of international health systems and professional bodies initiated formal re-examinations of earlier clinical practice assumptions in response to patient presentation and a growing uncertainty about the benefits of medical and surgical interventions."

"Systematic reviews and evidence reassessments have subsequently identified limitations in study quality, consistency, and follow-up alongside emerging evidence of treatment complications and potential harms," added the ASPS.

The ASPS made repeated reference both to the United Kingdom's damning 388-page Cass Review, which underscored that the sex-rejection regime was built on weak and unreliable evidence, and to the Department of Health and Human Services' exhaustive peer-reviewed 410-page 2025 report, titled "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices," which elaborated further on the pseudoscientific and harmful nature of so-called "gender-affirming care."

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The surgeons' group noted that these reports and other scientific literature "have contributed to a clearer understanding of potential harms, while also highlighting limitations of the available evidence, including gaps in documenting long-term physical, psychological, and psychosocial outcomes."

In addition to enjoying greater clarity about the ruinous and irreversible nature of "gender-affirming care" and the lack of quality evidence to support its practice, the ASPS noted that "available evidence suggests that a substantial proportion of children with prepubertal onset gender dysphoria experience resolution or significant reduction of distress by the time they reach adulthood, absent medical or surgical intervention."

The ASPS noted in conclusion that "there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents" and recommended that surgeons "delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old."

The surgeon group indicated further that "plastic surgeons should adopt a posture of heightened caution, enhanced documentation, and explicit uncertainty disclosure, recognizing that their role is not simply technical but ethical."

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., among the many who celebrated the ASPS' disavowal of child sex-rejecting practices, stated, "We commend the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for standing up to the overmedicalization lobby and defending sound science."

"By taking this stand, they are helping protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm," added Kennedy.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman at the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, "High praise to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for taking an important step toward ending the unscientific and harmful practice of sex-rejecting procedures on minors."

"The ASPS becomes the first major medical organization to support evidence-based and ethical medicine and reject, in their words, these harmful and irreversible procedures," continued Goldfarb. "The ASPS’s thoughtful, scientific, and well-reasoned statement today is a model for other medical organizations — namely the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others — to follow and disavow their previous support for experimental and unscientific interventions."

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Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

The ASPS issued its policy statement just days after a woman who underwent a sex-rejection surgery as a minor was awarded $2 million in the first medical malpractice lawsuit brought by a detransitioner to go to trial.

Fox Varian, 22, sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon, and their respective employers, after regretting the 2019 surgery that claimed her healthy breasts.

Dr. Miriam Grossman, the board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist who authored the 2023 book "Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness," told Blaze News in 2024 that such lawsuits would help to, at the very least, make practitioners "think twice before they pick up a scalpel and remove the healthy breasts" of a young girl.

"It could be the malpractice carriers will stop covering — if they have to pay out huge amounts, they may think twice about covering the malpractice of these surgeons," added Grossman.

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'Neither scientific nor medical': Leaked WPATH files shed light on the horror show that is 'gender-affirming care'



Leaked internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have provided damning insights into the pseudo-scientific practice of so-called gender-affirming care along with its ghastly consequences.

According to journalist Mia Hughes' 242-page report, published Monday by Michael Shellenberger's think tank, Environmental Progress, WPATH members "demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments."

Shellenberger, who collaborated on the report with Hughes and Tablet columnist Alex Gutentag, noted on X that the findings are especially troubling as the "American Medical Association, The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and thousands of doctors worldwide rely on WPATH. It is considered the leading global authority on gender medicine."

WPATH members quoted in the report can be seen discussing:

  • Giving irreversible medical treatments to mentally-compromised victims incapable of providing consent;
  • The inability of minors to comprehend the long-term consequences of so-called gender affirmation;
  • Putting a gloss on de-transition and post-operation regrets;
  • The narrative that minors should receive hormones or go under the knife because otherwise they'll kill themselves — a popular claim amongst LGBT activists that was shown to be false in a recent Finnish study; and
  • Various debilitating side effects of sex-change procedures.

In one instance, Dianne Berg, a child psychologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the child chapter of WPATH Standards of Care 8, admits that it is out of children's "developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them. They'll say they understand, but then they'll say something else that makes you think, oh, they didn't really understand that they are going to have facial hair."

Canadian endocrinologist Daniel Metzger noted during an internal WPATH panel discussion, "Most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about [fertility preservation] in a serious way."

"I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we're often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven't even had biology in high school yet," added Metzger.

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It's not just prospective child victims who are clueless about what their experimental transmogrification would ultimately entail. One WPATH member noted that parents sometimes sign off without knowing the stakes or what's involved in the medical intervention.

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The WPATH files also illuminate how some professionals in the sex-change industry appear to be freewheeling without an anchorage in ethics or reality.

One surgeon is quoted as suggesting that affirming surgeries don't have to produce looks and body parts that "exist in nature," even though WPATH condemned Republicans for suggesting that "gender-affirming health care is not experimental."

"I think we are going to see a wave of non-binary affirming requests for surgery that will include non-standard procedures," wrote the California surgeon. "I have worked with clients who identify as non-binary, agender, and Eunuchs who have wanted atypical surgical procedures, many of which either don't exist in nature or represent the first of their kind."

The WPATH files further reveal the nightmarish consequences victims have faced after receiving "gender-affirming care." There are secret stories of hormone-trigger liver cancer; pelvic inflammatory disease; pelvic floor dysfunction; atrophied uteri; painful orgasms; "[erections] feeling like broken glass"; and death.

"The WPATH Files show that what is called 'gender medicine' is neither science nor medicine," Shellenberger said in a statement. "The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It's not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent."

Environmental Progress indicated that it reached out for comment to every WPATH member named in the files and that two responded; one confirming the comments attributed to them and the other pushing back against how their remarks had been interpreted in the report.

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