Medical group finds U.S. significantly more permissive in child transgender treatment than Europe

A medical advocacy group said in a new report this month that the United States is an outlier compared to much of Europe in its broadly permissive approach to radical transgender treatments for young children. 

The group, Do No Harm, said in its report "Reassigned" that many northern and western European countries "share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism," yet those nations nevertheless "reject the gender-affirming care model for children" that is prevalent in the United States. 

That "care model" includes the practice of "puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries," which multiple nations in Europe have lately been rejecting in favor of more careful and evidence-based treatment. 

"In fact, several countries, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland, have explicitly abandoned it in recent years in part due to fear that medical intervention has become overprescribed," the report says.

"In a sharp departure from the gender affirmation model employed in the United States, these countries now discourage automatic deference to a child’s self-declarations on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits, while also calling for months-long psychotherapy sessions to address co-occurring mental health problems," it continues.

The United States, meanwhile, is "the most permissive country" among all of them "when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children."

The U.S. "should reconsider the gender- affirming care model to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients," the group said.