A group of doctors at U.S. military bases expressed their support for minors having access to experimental sex change procedures, including puberty blockers and hormones.
The Department of Defense healthcare providers claimed children as young as seven-years-old can consent to their own medical decisions.
According to a FOX News report, the doctors said, “youths… have an inherent ability and right to consent to gender-affirming therapy.”
Pentagon doctors claim 7-year-olds can make decisions to be injected with hormones, puberty suppressants | Fox News ……..Evil 😈 exists.. https://t.co/ufrAzKFbuE
— M. Todd Trebony, MD FAAC (@doc_singing) March 22, 2023
From FOX News:
The authors – David A. Klein, Thomas Baxter, Noelle S. Larson as well as clinical psychologist, Natasha A. Schvey, PhD – demanded the military train all of its providers on their ideas on gender medical interventions for minors, despite acknowledging that 53% of military-affiliated physicians in the Department of Defense health system indicated they would refuse to prescribe hormones regardless of any training.
Klein, Schvey and Baxter work at Travis Air Force Base in California, and Larson — a pediatric endocrinologist – works at the Department of Pediatrics at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Some of the authors work at Uniformed Services University – a military institution. The article recommended this institution take the lead in pushing forward trainings on “gender-affirming care” within the Pentagon health system.
Fox News asked the DoD whether it intended to offer trainings on the adolescent population in line with the ideas expressed by its clinicians.
“The Department of Defense will train its health care providers in keeping with current science and best medical evidence,” the DoD responded.
The DoD also told Fox News Digital that it does not support rushing anyone into taking drugs and that medical decisions are made in consultation between a minor and their guardians.
Pentagon doctors say 7-year-olds able to consent to sex changeshttps://t.co/Fh5ZsxwNf7
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 22, 2023
The Post Millennial added:
However, the team of healthcare providers suggested the cautious approach of “watchful waiting” for treating gender dysphoric youth was the equivalent of “conversion therapy.”
“Some well-intentioned military-affiliated clinicians may not be aware that a ‘watchful waiting’ approach has a different risk profile than a gender-affirmative approach (which allows for gender identity exploration), and that ‘conversion therapy’ is unethical, harmful, and generally illegal,” said the military doctors. “Patients may face ‘gatekeeping’ and major delays in care, including protracted and pathologizing psychiatric evaluations that question patient motives.”
The team criticized laws that ban doctors from performing medical sex changes on youth still in a stage of identity development, arguing that such laws assume adolescents are not capable of understanding the long-term implications of such interventions.
“These laws also assume that [transgender/gender-diverse] adolescents and their parents are incapable of understanding the risks and benefits of gender-affirming medical care and then deciding what is in the youth’s best interest,” said the doctors. “Prior research has found that children can begin participating in their medical decision-making as early as age seven years with gradual increases in decision-making capacity, and adolescents prefer shared decision-making.”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, of Do No Harm, an organization of healthcare providers seeking better care for minors suffering from gender distress, called such claims “laughable.”
“The notion that 7-year-old children are capable of such decisions is beyond laughable,” Goldfarb told Fox News. “The existence of a large, perhaps as much as 25 percent cohort of ‘detransitioners,’ suggests the folly of assuming the soundness of childhood decisions.”
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