The American Society of Plastic Surgeons published a position statement Tuesday recommending surgeons delay gender reassignment surgeries until a patient is 19-years-old, which earned praise from the Trump administration.

The release cites a Department of Health and Human Services article last year that highlights a “rapid expansion and implementation of a clinical protocol that lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification," when it comes to pediatric gender-affirming care.

The ASPS, which represents more than 11,000 physicians globally, agreed with HHS that there is low certainty in the risk-benefit ratio for gender-related surgical interventions for minors. 

“Available evidence suggests that a substantial proportion of children with prepubertal onset gender dysphoria experience resolution or significant reduction of distress by the time they reach adulthood, absent medical or surgical intervention,” the ASPS’s statement reads. “Evidence regarding adolescent onset presentation, which has become increasingly common since the mid-2010s, is more limited but similarly does not allow for confident prediction of long-term trajectories.”

Although the statement recommends postponing gender reassignment surgeries until the patient is no longer a minor, it does not give specific guidance when it comes to the use of hormonal gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers, even as it cites “substantial uncertainty” about the long-term benefits and harms of puberty blockers.

The nine-page report received praise from the Trump administration, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for taking a stand that helped "protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm." 

“When the medical ethics textbooks of the future are written, they’ll look back on sex-rejecting procedures for minors the way we look back on lobotomies," Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz added. "I applaud the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for placing itself on the right side of history by opposing these dangerous, unscientific experiments.”

The announcement by the ASPS comes just days after a New York jury awarded $2 million in damages to 22-year-old Fox Varian in the first malpractice suit from a detransitioner to go before a jury. She underwent gender-transition surgery at age 16, according to The Free Press.    

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.