Making a Dent: Liability Fears Are Driving Providers to Drop 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Kids Even Where It's Legal
Conservatives who find “gender-affirming care” for minors to be anything but “care” have been racing to put limits or even bans on procedures that mutilate children, but it is beginning to look like detransitioners have an unexpected ally — one that just might put an end to transgenderism for kids far faster than state legislators.
At present, 22 GOP-led states have put limits and bans in place to prevent doctors and hospitals from doling out puberty blockers and perpetrating radical — and irreversible — surgical procedures on kids who feel like they have gender dysphoria, even as Democrats push to expand such “care.”
Conservatives feel that transitioning a child before their age of consent is nothing more than child abuse, not to mention a violation of a doctor’s oath to “do no harm.”
Consequently, lawmakers have been moving to ban or limit these procedures being visited on kids. And it is a policy that even many European countries are also now moving toward.
Indeed, the U.S. lags far behind Europe on the issue, as many of the same European countries where the transgender craze caught an early foothold are beginning to reverse their once-automatic support for altering children medically. Many European countries are beginning to pull back and put more limits on transgender surgeries and drug therapies.
I explain WPATH’s recent about-face and evidence that American gender docs who claim that the U.S. is following the Dutch protocol are dishonest or incompetent. I also summarize some key differences between the Dutch and affirmative approaches. https://t.co/axQllOjvCl
— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) December 6, 2022
Despite Europe’s growing caution on transgendering children, Democrats in the U.S. are still ramping up their unquestioning support for transitioning younger and younger children, permanently altering their bodies while still not addressing the mental health issues that caused their transitioning desires in the first place.
While many leftists think they have won the battle, claiming that the few states pushing limits and bans are “outliers” and bigots, these liberals are just starting to realize that they have an unexpected foe in the battle: lawsuits.
NBC News recently reported that insurance companies and hospital administrators have made a move that is shocking liberals by stopping coverage for transgender “care” in states including Missouri and North Dakota.
At issue are states that have passed laws that feature less coverage for legal liability from patients who want to sue doctors and hospitals for pushing a child to “transition” to the opposite gender. A growing trend finds young people suing doctors and hospitals for forcing dangerous and permanent transgender procedures upon them when they were far younger than the age of consent.
This growing threat of lawsuits is sending some hospitals and insurance companies running for cover and causing them to drop support for transgender procedures, even in states where such procedures are still legal.
Brittany Stewart, a lawyer at Gender Justice, told NBC that many providers have simply stopped offering gender-affirming care, “To protect themselves from criminal liability, they’ve just decided to not even risk it because that vague law doesn’t give them enough detail to understand exactly what they can and cannot do.”
But the lawsuits are coming, for certain. In November of last year, for instance, former trans patient Chloe Cole announced that she intended to sue the doctors and hospitals that removed her breasts and gave her damaging drug therapies when she was a teenager.
In July, Cole told a congressional hearing that “I used to believe that I was born in the wrong body and the adults in my life, whom I trusted, affirmed my belief and this caused me lifelong, irreversible harm.”
“I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America. I speak to you in the hope that you will have the courage to bring the scandal to an end, and ensure that other vulnerable teenagers, children and young adults don’t go through what I went through,” she added.
“My childhood was ruined,” she said. “This needs to stop. You alone can stop it. Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience. Please let me be your final warning.”
Cole is not alone. North Carolina resident Prisha Mosley, now 25, is suing health care providers for transitioning her when she was only 17, and under the age of legal consent. Mosley underwent similar procedures as Cole and has been left unable to lead a normal life as a female, the gender of her birth.
A Minnesota woman named Luka Hein is also suing doctors, their practices, and a mental health professional in Nebraska over medical procedures visited upon her when she was a teenager.
As malpractice suits like these pile up and medical professionals in Europe begin to realize that so-called “gender-affirming care” is not helping ease the mental anguish of many teens who imagine they are transgender, insurance companies and hospitals are beginning to shy away from offering these destructive and dangerous treatments.
While politics might not be too quick to sway these medical professionals from their transgender path, the threat of losing their licenses or paying huge penalties, settlements and judgments in lawsuits are more immediately daunting. Perhaps the end is near for these wretched practices after all.
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