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Sex Changes For Kids?
By Christina Quick | May 27, 2008
A pediatric endocrinologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital is creating controversy after recently launching a clinic where he prescribes hormone-blocking drugs for children as young as 7 to make it easier for them to get a sex change when they’re older.
According to a Liberty Counsel press release, Dr. Norman Spack administers either luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) or medroxyprogesterone, which blocks estrogen or testosterone to delay the onset of puberty. The drugs, which can cause permanent infertility, are meant to stop girls from developing their menstrual cycle, breasts and other normal female characteristics, and prevent boys from developing a deeper voice, facial hair and other normal male characteristics.
Shortly after halting puberty, cross-hormones would be administered to simulate the puberty of the opposite sex. Estrogen is given to boys and testosterone to girls. The final step would involve removal of male or female organs and plastic surgery.
Gender Identity Disorder (GID), which these children allegedly experience, is classified as a mental disorder. A GID diagnosis involves someone whose biology and physiology is indisputably male or female, but subjectively this person has a desire to be the opposite sex. Children who are diagnosed with GID later in life often abandon the desire to be the opposite sex.
In 1966, Johns Hopkins University started performing the nation’s first “sex reassignment” surgery in its Gender Identity Clinic. In 1979 the university hospital stopped performing these surgeries when it was discovered that the patients’ well-being did not improve and the procedures were destroying healthy organs. The hospital decided the best treatment was through psychology, focusing on healing the mind.
“Seven-year-old children are thinking about video games and riding their bicycles, not about artificially transitioning to the opposite gender,” says Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law. “Since Gender Identity Disorder is purely subjective, it is dangerous and unethical to give drugs to children to block the onset of puberty. Gender Identity Disorder is a mental, not a physical disorder. We do not treat anorexia with liposuction and we should not treat gender confusion with plastic surgery.”
If this is allowed to continue, I shudder to think of the long-term physical and emotional repercussions this will have on children and families. Drastically altering a growing child’s chemistry like this is wrong on so many levels and will likely unleash a host of devastating side effects. I wonder how long it will be before one of these young patients grows up and sues the people responsible for maiming him or her.
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