Health care providers in the United Kingdom will stop routinely prescribing puberty blockers to minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the U.K.’s National Health Service announced this week.
“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of PSH [puberty blockers] to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” said England’s National Health Service (NHS).
The decision came on Tuesday, after the NHS judged that there was no evidence that puberty blockers improved mental health or reduced suicide risk for minors.
The NHS also highlighted the health risks of puberty blockers, particularly the risk of harm to a child’s bone development.
The decision comes as country has been seeing a sharp rise in the number of minors being referred to gender clinics.
According to the BBC, England has seen an increase of referrals from 250 per year, to over 5,000 per year in 2022.
The NHS’ new ruling will prevent puberty blockers from being prescribed routinely, but does not entirely ban their use for minors.
The drugs will still be permitted as part of clinical trials, and individual physicians will be allowed to petition the NHS to be able to prescribe the drugs in individual cases.
The rules will also allow any minors currently receiving the drugs to continue to do so, but, according to the BBC, only 100 minors are currently receiving the drugs from the NHS.
According to Reuters, over 5,000 children were receiving puberty blockers in the U.S. in 2021.
The NHS decision led to a variety of responses, with transgender activists arguing that puberty blockers should be widely available regardless of the potential health effects, and conservatives arguing that the decision does not go far enough.
“We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS. Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child,” said Health Minister Maria Caulfield.
The NHS’s decision adds to a growing movement in Europe to reevaluate the medical and scientific consensus around recommended treatments for gender dysphoria, which have previously included permanent and irreversible pharmaceutical interventions, like puberty blockers.
In 2021, Sweden, which had been liberal in its policies regarding gender transitioning children, changed its policy after negative health effects came to light, banning the use of puberty blockers for minors.
Norway and France have also implemented more restrictive policies regarding transgender procedures for children.
As Europe is coming to acknowledge the lack of evidence supporting positive health outcomes for so-called “gender-affirming” care, Maine policymakers are continuing to expand access to the very same sex-change procedures.
In July, Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed a bill into law allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to receive puberty blockers and other transgender drugs without parental consent.
At the local level, Maine’s public schools have also seen fierce debate over parental rights versus the role of school officials in providing gender-transition counseling.
In Dec. 2022, the mother of a Great Salt Bay Community School student discovered that a 26-year-old social worker had been secretly counseling her daughter on how to transition into a male, including providing the 13-year-old with breast-binders without her mother’s knowledge or consent.
Shortly after the mother, Amber Lavigne, of New Castle, filed a complaint against the social worker and complained with school officials, she received a surprise visit from Child Protective Services (CPS).
Maine’s public schools have even facilitated the delivery of prescription drugs to minors — totally unrelated to gender transitions — through school-based clinics.
In September, a school-based clinic in the Lawrence High School gave an unlabeled bag of prescription antidepressants to a minor student without the consent of her parents, and without informing them.
When the father complained, CPS were sent to conduct a three-hour long “welfare check” before the allegations against them were deemed unfounded.
Currently, Maine’s legislature is considering a bill (LD 227) to make Maine a legal sanctuary for the provision of sex-change drugs and surgeries, as well as late-term abortions.
The bill, LD 227 would create protections for adults who bring individuals, including minors, across state lines and into Maine so that they can receive abortions or transgender procedures, even if the adult is not related to the child.
Conservative critics have argued that the bill would essentially legalize kidnapping children from their parents in the name of providing transgender procedures or abortions.
Attorneys General in 15 other states sent a letter Monday to Maine’s top elected officials warning them that passage of LD 227 would trigger lawsuits challenging what they called the “constitutionally defective approach” of the bill.
The initial public hearing for the bill saw a massive outpouring of Mainers testifying in opposition to the proposal.
More from the Maine Wire:
- AUA Study: Sex-Change Surgeries May INCREASE Suicidality
- GOP AGs Threaten Maine Over “totalitarian” Child Sex-Change Bill
- Maine Poised to OK Sex-Change Hormones for Minors Without Parental Consent
- Allagash Brewing Becomes Top Sponsor of Group That Advocates Late-Term Abortion, Sex-Changes for Kids
- Sex-change Surgeries, Paid for by Taxpayers, Rising Sharply in Maine
- Leaked Docs Show Top Transgender Association Violating Medical Ethics, Hiding Harms of “Gender-Affirming Care” – WPATH
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="26546 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=26546">2 Comments
Maine Democrats have proven they hate children.
They legalized killing babies up to the moment before birth.
They are trying to legalize removing parental rights (they’ve already taken fathers’ away basically), grooming, trafficking, using damaging drugs, mutilating and state sanctioned kidnapping.
More children die in the care of the state of Maine than in any other state.
Democrats abort their kids and the ones that somehow get born get their genitals removed — no wonder they need a huge influx of foreigners to replace them.