President Joe Biden’s Pentagon is arguing for gender-affirming care for minors as young as seven years old who belong to military families.
In a March edition of the American Journal of Public Health, Department of Defense providers expressed their support for children to be put on hormone blockers and sex change surgeries despite the dangers of its long-term effects, both mentally and physically.
“Affirming care has only recently become politicized; protection of gender-affirming medical care for military-affiliated [transgender] youths may require a declarative position without tolerance for personal biases, as the DoD has historically achieved for other minoritized groups,” the authors wrote.
Titled “Caring for Military-Affiliated Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youths: A Call for Protections,” claim that the only option for children who present gender dysphoria signs is to immediately move forward with gender-affirming care, arguing it is a “human right.”
“Youths… have an inherent ability and right to consent to gender-affirming therapy,” the doctors wrote, adding that 7-year-olds can make their own medical decisions.
The authors also said banning boys who identify as girls from playing on girls’ sports teams and separating bathrooms by sex are “harmful.”
The article attacked red states that have passed laws protecting youth from the life-alternating care that messes with their biological sex, saying, “threats to military-affiliated youths, parents, guardians, and clinicians are threats to military readiness.”
The authors accused states of creating a public health crisis by restricting gender-affirming care for children.
“New state laws directly harm TGD [transgender and gender-diverse] adolescents by denying access to potentially life-saving medical care and further exacerbating health care inequities, health risk behaviors, and preventable deaths,” the doctors wrote.
The authors, David A. Klein, Thomas Baxter, Noelle S. Larson, and clinical psychologist Natasha A. Schvey, Ph.D., demanded the military train its providers on their ideas on gender medical interventions for minors.