Director Of Boston Children’s Hospital Advocates For Significant Expansion In Capacity For Gender-Affirming Care Involving Surgeries For Minors

postmillenial.com

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The “gender-affirming care” (GAC) battle rages on across the country with several states banning life-altering surgeries for minors.  

Kids are not allowed to make other decisions like getting a tattoo, so why should they be allowed to do something as drastic as cutting off body parts? 

Boston Children’s Hospital co-director at its Center for Gender Surgery doesn’t see it that way. 

Oren Ganor, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who specializes in “gender-affirming” surgeries, co-wrote an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month calling for an increase in the capacity for gender surgeries for kids. 

Boston Children’s Hospital was at the center of a controversy last summer when it was discovered that it allowed mastectomies on teens as young as 15 and stated on its website that vaginoplasties would be performed on 17-year-olds.

The hospital denies providing genital surgeries on minors, but Ganor stated in an email that “the hospital is ‘slightly flexible’ when it comes to the age of transgender girls seeking genital surgery,” according to a local news outlet. 

The article “Streamlining Interstate Access to Gender-Affirming Surgeries” states:

Gender-affirming care (GAC) has become the target of political scrutiny, with many states making provision more difficult, if not illegal. As gender-affirming surgeries have become safer and more effective, health care policy at all levels can play an important role in ensuring adequate care for transgender patients. We detail key health care policy considerations to facilitate interstate GAC given current constraints. Factors influencing access to GAC include regulatory and legal barriers, clinician capacity and training considerations, and financial issues.

Physicians who provide GAC will face a greater burden due to constraints in certain states… work to criminalize GAC for adolescents…especially as certain states work to criminalize GAC for adolescents, and there will be an increased flux of patients traveling to seek care in states with more open legislation.

The article called for the opening of more medical clinics with specific knowledge of the gender-affirming model. The goal is to “improve capacity for this patient population.”

“[P]lastic surgery residencies currently do not have a recommended number of gender-affirming surgery cases that plastic surgery trainees see during training,” the authors wrote, highlighting a need for better training efforts in this field.

“It is important to recognize that for many gender-diverse young people, the decision to engage in gender-affirming care can be lifesaving and life-changing. Without this care, gender-diverse youth can experience severe distress, anxiety, and depression,” the Children’s Hospital told Fox News Digital.

“[A]ny decisions about gender-affirming care should be made after a rigorous evaluation process that involves a psychologist or social worker, a patient’s doctor, and their parents or guardians.”

Massachusets Attorney General Racheal Rollins, said, “I want to say generally that health care providers who support and offer care to gender-diverse and transgender individuals and their families deserve to do so without fear.”

Has anyone bothered to ask why the need for “gender-affirming care” is on the rise?

Are we just supposed to accept that the sharp rise in transgender youth is natural? Even the New York Times has questioned the phenomenon.