A new study has found that in spite of popular conservative belief, gender-affirming surgeries for minors are extremely rare. The study published on Thursday by the online Journal of the American Medical Association pulled U.S. medical data from 2019 to assess the rates of gender-affirming surgeries consistent with a gender dysphoria diagnosis as well as those without.
Intersex individuals who underwent surgery, and all other surgeries conducted due to illness or injury were excluded from the final data, which found only 150 cases of a minor receiving a “gender-affirming surgery” in 2019. However, of the 150 discovered, 146 (or 97%) were chest reduction surgeries performed on cisgender male youth. This means “gender-affirming surgeries” were almost exclusively used to treat gynecomastia, or a build up of breast gland tissue in young boys.
During that time, no trans or gender-diverse youth under 12 years old received gender-affirming surgeries, according to Them. What’s more, the few that were performed on minors between the ages of 13-17, were almost exclusively chest-related procedures.
These new findings practically put Republican legislation on gender-affirming care to shame, by revealing all the conservative hubbub is essentially baseless. Leader author Dannie Dai of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said in a press release “Health policy should be driven by facts. We hope that our study will help policymakers understand how gender-affirming surgery is being used by both cisgender and trans or gender-diverse (TGD) people.”
“Our findings highlight a bitter irony: that by banning gender-affirming care for only TGD people, these bills are targeting a group that in reality accounts for the minority of gender affirming care use and for whom gender-affirming care has been most clearly shown to be lifesaving.”
Gender-affirming care bans which have swept the nation’s conservative states in recent years are often based on the argument that those under the age of 18 are too young to make the decision to have a life-changing surgery or procedure, and that the practice of doing so is “mutilation.” However, politicians who champion gender-affirming care bans have very little evidence to back the idea that this is truly a prevalent problem affecting youth. In fact, the science always backs the fact that not having access to all forms of gender-affirming care is more dangerous to minors than the surgeries themselves.
Various health associations and organizations have openly voiced support for the practice of gender-affirming care, including the American Psychological Association (APA). In an official statement, the APA said “the spread of misleading and unfounded narratives that mischaracterize gender dysphoria and affirming care, is likely resulting in further stigmatization, marginalization, and lack of access to psychological and medical supports for transgender, gender diverse, and nonbinary individuals.”
