Several Defense Department doctors defended sex-change procedures for minors and took aim at Republican-led states who have banned the life-altering procedures for children in a major medical journal.
The doctors, who published an article in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health, came out firmly in favor of allowing children to be placed on puberty blockers and given cross-sex hormones despite concerns over the long-term effects of such treatments.
The article, entitled “Caring for Military-Affiliated Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youths: A Call for Protections,” was written by David A. Klein, Thomas A. Baxter, and Natasha A. Schvey who all work at Travis Air Force Base in California, as well as Noelle S. Larson, who works in the pediatrics department at Walter Reed National Military Hospital.
“Gender-affirming health care, such as puberty suppression and affirming hormones, mitigates these risks and optimizes patient-oriented outcomes, but many TGD youths have difficulty accessing services,” the authors claim in the article, which was first reported on by Fox News.
The authors discuss so-called “barriers” to giving cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to children including a survey that found that over half of military-affiliated doctors would not be willing to prescribe hormones and new state laws banning such procedures.
“Legislative efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for youths have been described as a public health crisis. New state laws directly harm TGD [transgender and gender-diverse] adolescents by denying access to potentially life-saving medical care and further exacerbating health care inequities, health risk behaviors, and preventable deaths,” the military doctors write.
The doctors also claimed that laws that ban boys who identify as girls from playing on girls’ sports teams and that segregate bathrooms by sex are “harmful.” They ponder what military doctors in red states will do when “state laws conflict with ethical medical practice and the standard of care.”
“Threats to military-affiliated youths, parents, guardians, and clinicians are threats to military readiness,” the article says.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP
The authors also claim that evidence suggests that children can consent to sex-change procedures. “Deontological and consequentialist reasoning, rooted in empirical evidence and human rights, suggests that youths with decisional capacity, in an informed consent model of care, have an inherent ability and right to consent to gender-affirming therapy,” the authors write.
As the article does not portray the official opinions of the Defense Department, the authors ask the department to take an official stance, urging it to “leverage its robust, intact systems to overcome evolving barriers to the provision of and access to care.”
“The Department of Defense will train its health care providers in keeping with current science and best medical evidence,” the Department of Defense told Fox News.
Even as states like Tennessee and Mississippi have banned sex-change procedures on minors, the Biden administration has spoken out against such laws and in favor of the procedures.