The promotion of puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries to modify sex traits performed as a remedy for mental distress may be the biggest medical scandal of our time. Despite no high-quality studies or long-term evidence, these radical interventions have been presented not only as safe, but as medically-necessary and lifesaving. Nothing could be farther from the truth.  

Long-term studies on adults post surgery show an increased risk of suicide, despite the restrictive patient screening that was once required (but which has been largely abandoned). Studies involving children show that most gender distress resolves after adolescence without medical intervention. In fact, medical interventions appear to cause feelings of distress to persist. Kids on puberty blockers—drugs marketed as giving a child “time to think” or as a way to help children avoid the “wrong” puberty—are all but guaranteed to continue to opposite-sex hormones, a statistical anomaly that can’t be attributed to quality assessment prior to treatment given that reports show that there’s often no assessment at all before starting blockers.

A 2023 report from the Journal of the American Medical Association documents nearly 50,000 “gender-affirming” surgeries in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019. Of those, 7% (3,500) were performed on patients 18 or younger, and 52% on patients 19 to 30. The most common procedures were breast augmentation for males and double mastectomies for females at 56%, followed by genital surgeries at 35%. A 2024 analysis of insurance claims from hospitals offering hormones and surgeries for minors by Do No Harm (a conservative medical advocacy group) found that between 2019 and 2023, approximately 14,000 minors underwent “gender-affirming” medical treatment with 5,747 minors undergoing surgery. This analysis is an undercount because it doesn’t include procedures paid for out of pocket or those performed by hospitals that don’t divulge information (like Kaiser Permanente which serves 43% of California's commercial health insurance customers).

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Many countries acknowledge that the risks of interventions included in the “gender-affirming” model outweigh the possible benefits and have stopped recommending them. Over half of U.S. states (all of them “red”) have banned these treatments for minors and in January 2025, a Trump administration Executive Order directed agencies to withhold funds from hospitals offering sex-trait modification for gender-distressed minors. But, U.S. medical associations and Democrats, who proudly self-identify as the “party of science,” continue to promote these wholly unproven medical interventions. Ignoring the evidence is not “kind” and stands in contrast to the principles Democrats hold dear. Too many young people and vulnerable adults have paid the price for this reckless approach.