This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
America is facing an "epidemic" of transgenderism among children, with more than 300,000 kids ages 13-17 identified as transgender during 2022, up by 100% from the previous estimates.
And it's a "cause for alarm," according to a new report from American First Policy Institute.
"Transgender identification increases risks for exposure to dangerous and irreversible medical interventions like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries," the report warns.
"Transgender identification is the first step along a path culminating in medically unnecessary, dangerous, and life-altering medical interventions. The pain and suffering caused by these (often ghastly) procedures are especially tragic, given that the premise underlying this entire field of 'medicine' is so obviously in error. No person possesses a 'gender identity' contrary to that person's sex."
The report's conclusion notes that "The confusion that pushes vulnerable children toward these barbaric procedures is exacerbated by many of the nation's prominent institutions—its medical, education, and political establishments—embracing unscientific, gender ideology–informed policies, concepts, and jargon."
"The spread of gender ideology in K-12 schools is especially concerning. There is additionally good cause for believing online social media and pornography consumption contribute to gender confusion,' It explains the belief, promoted around the nation and the world at the highest levels when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were in office.
Actually, following the science, a man cannot become a woman, nor a woman become a man, because being male or female is embedded into the human body down to the DNA level.
The report cites Komodo Health, which drew on private and public health insurance claims to confirm that gender dysphoria diagnoses, "a proxy for transgender identification," rose 178% among children 6-17 from 2017-2021. Further, cross-sex hormone prescriptions more than doubled, and breast implantations, or removals, increased by more than 18%.
"These trends are stark. At the same time, the true scope of the youth market for transgender medical procedures is almost certainly larger than the analysis by Komodo suggests. A recent analysis of the National Insurance Database uncovered 'evidence of 5,288 to 6,294 'gender-affirming' double mastectomies for girls under age 18 from 2017–2023. Annual counts for these procedures exceeded 1,000 in both 2021 and 2022—far more than the 238–282 identified by Komodo," the report noted.
It confirmed that from 2019 to 2023, there were 13,994 transgender medical interventions were performed on children, 5,747 "sex change" surgeries were performed on children, and 62,682 hormone and puberty blocker prescriptions written for 8,579 child patients.
And nearly $120 million "was made from performing transgender medical interventions on children.
The result?
"Serious and irreparable harm. The side effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones include impotence, sterility, and physical health complications ranging from stunted growth to cancer. Notwithstanding claims to the contrary by transgender activists, these changes are often permanent. Sex-reassignment surgeries are worse still. Amputating healthy body parts because confused children believe doing so will ease their anxiety is reckless and cruel."
And it's the fault of adults, as children are not legally permitted to consume alcohol, and are not "capable of making life-altering decisions."
It is the "school-to-clinic pipeline" in which men, "who dress as hyper-sexualized caricatures of women and recruit children to publicly participate in their fetishes. It is adults who implement policies allowing boys into girls' sports and intimate facilities and who mandate the use of so-called 'preferred pronouns'. It is adults, not children, who create the online social media platforms and pornographic content that fuels the transgender social contagion."
It doesn't become a person's "identity" simply because there is a mental health condition, the report charges.
"As recently as 2012, transgenderism (formerly 'transsexualism') was widely recognized as a mental/sexual health disorder. For example, in the fourth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the American Psychiatric Association (APA) defined 'gender identity disorder' (GID) as 'a persistent and strong cross-gender identification and a persistent unease with one's sex.'"
Needing to be recognized, too, is that transgender patients are nearly four times as likely to have been diagnosed with substance abuse disorders, more than four times as likely to have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, more than five times as likely to have been diagnosed with a mood or anxiety disorder, and nearly 10 times as likely to have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Post-traumatic stress issues and personality disorders also are widely present in that community.
The problem was aggravated in 2013 when the medical community decided that it was the "stress" felt by gender-confused patients that was the disorder, not the gender confusion itself.
As of now, the report said, 27 states had passed legislation to protect children from harmful, irreversible, and unapproved transgender surgeries and medications: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
