Is sanity returning on transgender issues?

Readers awakened this week to a headline declaring “Woman Wins Malpractice Suit Over Gender Surgery as a Minor" in The New York Times.  In a “first-of-its-kind” jury verdict in New York state, of all places, a jury has awarded $2 million in damages for performing a double mastectomy on a then 16-year-old teenager who was then transitioning to be a male.

The young woman, Fox Varian, now 22, later reidentified as a woman and claimed her medical providers deviated from standard gender-related medical care. The jury awarded Ms. Varian $1.6 million for pain and suffering and $400,000 for future medical expenses.

Ms. Varian’s mother testified at trial that she strongly opposed the surgery but was told by her daughter's psychologist that without the surgery, the teen might commit suicide (a tactic often used by medical professionals advocating such surgeries).

The success of this lawsuit highlights several recent events that signal a tidal wave against sexual transitioning surgeries for minors in the U.S. Last summer in Tennessee, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee state law that prohibits some medical treatments for transgender minors, thus upholding similar laws in at least 20 other states.

Then, in December, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services stated that it would cancel federal funding from all hospitals that provided such treatments.

Now, in the wake of the New York jury verdict, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has recommended that its members “refrain from performing gender transition procedures on young patients until they reach age 19, a shift that comes at a time of mounting opposition to such care at the state and federal levels.” 

One can easily imagine that the successful suit by Ms. Varian in New York state is a harbinger of an avalanche of such suits across the country.

What is at stake here is a legal precedent that goes back many decades in American jurisprudence. There are several American religious sects (perhaps most prominently Jehovah’s Witnesses) that have religious objections to blood transfusions, even when it may mean the difference between life and death. In at least cases where the situation is life-threatening, the courts have adopted the position that adults (18 or older) do have the right to refuse blood transfusions. However, for those under 18, the courts have coalesced about taking medical custody of the children from the parents because the minor children, as minors, are not capable of adequately understanding the implications and consequences of refusing blood transfusions, and the state has a responsibility to safeguard such minors.

It would seem that this is the legal precedent that should govern in transgender cases. Having been a teenager and having raised three teenagers, I can assure you that teenagers do not have fully developed frontal lobes and should not be left without adult supervision when it comes to such life-changing decisions.

If an adult wants to embark on life-changing transgender treatments, then that is their prerogative. However, we have a societal obligation to protect children, whether it involves blood transfusions or transgender surgeries. It appears as if America is waking up to this transgender madness and is reacting as a sane society should.