Free Republic

The Supreme Court will hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a Tennessee law banning gender-transition procedures for minors, inserting itself for the first time into the heated public debate surrounding the government’s role in protecting children from experimental procedures that come with lifelong medical consequences. The Supreme Court announced on Monday it will hear United States v. Skrmetti, a case brought by multiple transgender plaintiffs and their families against a Tennessee law prohibiting minors from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and invasive transgender surgical procedures. The Biden administration joined the case in support for the plaintiffs.

The American College of Pediatricians has released a new position paper outlining findings based on a review of dozens of studies to claim that providing gender transition procedures to minors with gender dysphoria does not lead to an improvement in mental health.The ACP, which describes itself as a 600-member “national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children,” released the report Monday titled “Mental Health in Adolescents with Incongruence of Gender Identity and Biological Sex.” The group has long expressed skepticism about surgical and hormonal interventions for children who say they identify as...

Centred on the University of Lille, France, in September 2022, a group of international researchers reported in the prestigious journal Science that the progressive devolution in mental abilities of people suffering from Down Syndrome (DS) could be attributed to an associated reduction in the production of a particular hormone. They based their assertion on the results of experiments they had performed on genetically engineered mouse models of DS and on a small group of adult human sufferers of DS, in all of which the levels of the hormone had been restored to normal by various experimental means.[1] The researchers report...

Studies cannot pose more than minimal risk to humans and must include appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of those involved.In an effort to encourage the discovery of more treatment and diagnostic options in the medical field, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finalized a rule allowing certain clinical trials to operate without obtaining informed consent from participants. The hitch? The study cannot pose more than minimal risk to humans and must include appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of those involved. The rule was issued in late December 2023 and went...

Arkansas’ governor on Monday vetoed a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, calling the legislation a “vast government overreach” and a “product of the cultural war in America.” Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said that if signed into law, the bill would interfere with physicians and parents “as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people.” The bill, which is part of a wave of similar legislation across the country, would have banned doctors from providing transgender minors with gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapies and transition-related surgeries, and from referring...

There is little that Jeffrey Younger and Anne Georgulas agree on about one of their twins. To start: Is the 7-year-old transgender? It’s a question that has divided the Coppell, Tex., parents — on how Luna, who was named James at birth, should be dressed to school and wear their hair. On whether the child should receive gender-affirming care, which could eventually lead to medical treatment to delay puberty. On which parent should get to live with the twins, and who should have a say in decisions over their health.