The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), representing the vast majority of board-certified American plastic surgeons, has courageously broken ranks with the broader medical community’s prevailing stance on “gender-affirming care” for minors.
In a bold move, ASPS communicated to Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute its stance: it has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for treating adolescents with gender dysphoria. This announcement highlights significant concerns about the long-term efficacy and safety of surgical interventions for chest and genital modifications in minors, underscoring the poor quality and certainty of existing evidence.
This development is a beacon of reason in a sea of unchecked medical practices. ASPS is stepping up where many have faltered, echoing the sentiments of Doctors Protecting Children—a group advocating for rigorous evaluations and therapies that focus on underlying psychological issues accompanying gender dysphoria rather than rushing into irreversible medical procedures. This group’s July declaration was a clarion call for medical organizations across the U.S. to halt the promotion of potentially harmful treatments such as social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for distressed minors.
The call for a reevaluation of these procedures is not just a matter of medical ethics but also of scientific integrity. The U.K.’s Cass Review sharply criticized the methodological echo chamber of WPATH and the U.S. Endocrine Society, which have pushed a consensus-based more on mutual citations than on solid, independent scientific scrutiny. Remarkably, the U.S. remains one of the few Western nations that allow minors to undergo gender surgeries—a fact that should give any rational observer pause.
In an era where the cultural tides push for rapid acceptance and implementation of new medical norms without sufficient scrutiny, the ASPS’s stance is a commendable example of principled resistance. It’s a call to all medical professionals to uphold their duty to protect and truly understand their patients before taking irreversible actions. This is the kind of integrity we must demand from all corners of the medical community, especially when the health and futures of our youth are at stake. It’s time we prioritized our children over radical gender ideology.
