{"id":83612,"date":"2025-06-24T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=83612"},"modified":"2025-06-20T19:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T23:13:08","slug":"supremes-allow-banning-transgender-treatment-for-minors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/06\/supremes-allow-banning-transgender-treatment-for-minors\/","title":{"rendered":"Supremes Allow Banning Transgender Treatment for Minors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has ruled that states can ban transgender medical interventions for minors<\/a>.\u00a0 The 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti<\/a> upheld a Tennessee law forbidding the use of puberty blockers and hormones as treatments for gender dysphoria in children.<\/p>\n

Twenty-six other states have laws similar to Tennessee\u2019s.\u00a0 Last month, the highest court in the U.K.<\/a> ruled that sex-based rights defined in the country\u2019s Equality Act can only be applied to biological sex, thus protecting female spaces and services.<\/p>\n

\n

Editor Emily Yoffe has published an article for The Free Press<\/em> entitled The End of Youth Gender Transition?<\/a>\u00a0 She thinks that these rulings may mark the end of the transgender movement.<\/p>\n

She quotes a think-tanker on the impact of the decision:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ruling effectively establishes a path forward for states to restrict practices their legislatures regard as harmful and inadequately regulated,\u201d said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. \u201cA second-order effect, one can hope, is that the ruling will draw more attention to the flimsy evidence base, lack of reasonable clinical rationale, and ethical problems in the provision of these interventions to minors.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yoffe notes that gender dysphoria, the dissatisfaction with one\u2019s own sex, used to be extremely rare, she notes.\u00a0 In less than two decades, 100 sex-change clinics for children opened up in the United States.\u00a0 Between 2017 an 2023, as many as 400,000 children were diagnosed with gender dysphoria.\u00a0 Before, the rare cases were of boys who wished to be girls. But most of this surge has come from adolescent girls who had never shown previous symptoms but who have seemed to be influenced by social media.<\/p>\n

The idea that biological sex is not a fixed reality but a social construct took hold so quickly that, seemingly overnight, children in preschool were being instructed they could easily change their sex if they felt they were in \u201cthe wrong body.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Children who express gender distress often suffer from a host of other medical and psychological issues, such as autism, ADHD, depression, or anxiety, or have experienced various traumas. But to the gender doctors in their lucrative new clinics, there was only one answer to such childhood troubles: gender transition. This usually meant medically blocking a child\u2019s normal puberty, then putting that patient on opposite-sex hormones: testosterone for girls, estrogen for boys. Sometimes complicated and painful surgeries were undertaken to try to create new genitals.\u00a0Thousands of teenage girls, and some not even teenagers, have received double mastectomies, known euphemistically as \u201ctop surgery\u201d\u2014a surgical intervention normally reserved to treat breast cancer.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., gender-distressed children and their parents were told that without the swift intervention of these radical treatments, the children were likely to commit suicide. It became a clich\u00e9 for the reluctant parents of girls seeking to transition to be asked by the gender provider, \u201cWould you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?\u201d (And vice versa for parents of boys.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the Supreme Court hearing, the ACLU lawyer arguing against Tennessee\u2019s law was forced by Justice Alito to admit that such suicides are, in fact, \u201crare.\u201d\u00a0 Scientific evidence has piled up refuting the various medical claims that such treatments are necessary or even beneficial.\u00a0 Gender dysphoria ends with most children if they are allowed to go through puberty.<\/p>\n

Much of Europe, for all of its liberal \u201ctolerance,\u201d no longer allows for sex change drugs or surgeries on children.\u00a0 President Trump issued an executive order declaring<\/a> that the federal government would no longer \u201cfund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called \u2018transition\u2019 of a child from one sex to another,\u201d and that it would \u201crigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.\u201d Many hospitals have stopped these treatments and a number of the clinics providing them have shut down.\u00a0 Many schools are changing their policies of sending students to \u201cgender-affirming\u201d counselors.\u00a0 And the public is increasingly opposed<\/a> to transgenderism, with 66% opposing men who identify as women competing in women\u2019s sports and 56% opposing medical interventions on minors.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, major medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, continue to support the chemical sterilization and sexual mutilation of children.<\/p>\n

Shouldn\u2019t courts defer to such experts?\u00a0 No, said Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion.\u00a0 As reported by Katelynn Richardson<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Courts should defer to legislatures over experts, Thomas wrote, noting medical professionals \u201cdeclared a consensus around the efficacy of treating children\u2019s gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have dismissed grave problems undercutting the assumption that young children can consent to irreversible treatments that may deprive them of their ability to eventually produce children of their own,\u201d Thomas wrote. \u201cThey have built their medical determinations on concededly weak evidence. And, they have surreptitiously compromised their medical recommendations to achieve political ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDetransitioners\u201d who regret undergoing medical procedures raise another cause for concern, Thomas wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates have an interest in ensuring that minor patients have the time and capacity to fully understand the irreversible treatments they may undergo,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These legal findings may set up the basis for lawsuits.\u00a0 Some malpractice suits against doctors who sterilized and mutilated children would go a long way to ending these practices once and for all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 Panorama of the United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk<\/a> by Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court has ruled that states can ban transgender medical interventions for minors.\u00a0 The decision upheld a Tennessee law that is similar to that of 26 other states. 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