Bold editorial from Texas
By Mary Laval
The Dallas Morning News, one of the biggest newspapers in Texas, just today published a bold editorial entitled Follow the science behind transgender care: If gender-affirming research is changing, so should clinics.
Citing the recent somewhat mysterious and sudden closure of a Texan youth gender clinic, the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board states: “The science behind gender-affirming care seems to be producing more questions than answers.”
The piece then goes on to note the unprecedented rise in cases of young people visiting clinics for gender dysphoria. “Until recent decades, transgenderism was more common among natal boys, arose early in childhood, and persisted. But the recent surge bucks all those norms…. It’s more common among natal girls, it arises in adolescence, and, according to a 2018 paper in the International Journal of Transgenderism, almost 70% of children outgrow their gender dysphoria if they don’t undergo gender-affirming treatment.”
The Board then points out the lack of evidence about the effects of medicalization: “[T]he argument for gender-affirming care is that many can’t afford to have one more, deeply personal stressor piled on….But researchers aren’t finding links between gender-affirming care and relief from psychological stress.”
Finally, researchers point out that gender-affirming care starts patients on a course that is hard to reverse. A common treatment progression starts with psychiatry, then moves to chemical puberty suppression (if the patient hasn’t completed puberty), then cross-gender hormones (testosterone for natal girls), then surgery. Once a child starts down that road, they seldom turn back. In one study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, 100% of puberty suppression patients moved on to hormone treatment, even though “gender dysphoria and body satisfaction did not change” during puberty suppression.
-Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
The Editorial Board concludes: “Bottom line: on the question of gender-affirming care, we should follow the science, wherever it goes. And we should expect our hospitals to do the same.”
We thank the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board for writing such a balanced piece and hope it sticks to the courage of its convictions against the now routine and inevitable onslaught they will receive from activists.