The Journal of the American Medical Association published a new study last week analyzing the number of people in the U.S. who underwent medical mutilation procedures––what it referred to as “gender-affirming surgeries” (GAS)––discovering that more than 48,000 people, including 3,678 patients aged 12-18 years, were surgically mutilated between 2016-2019.
The Columbia University study, “National Estimates of Gender-Affirming Surgery in the US,” stratified surgical patients into seven age groups, in which the youngest category was notably grouped ages 12-18. The study revealed that in this age group 87 percent underwent breast or chest procedures, 11 percent had genital surgery, and nearly 10 percent had facial or cosmetic interventions. For reasons not specified in the study, the researchers did not separate minors into their own 12-17 group making it impossible to know exactly how many children under age 18 were surgically mutilated.
However, a different study by Vanderbilt University researchers in October 2022 titled, “Gender-Affirming Chest Surgeries Increase by Nearly 5x in Teens,” did stratify children into a 12-17 age group finding that 489 minors had chest surgeries in the same four-year time period. These studies clearly indicate by including ages as low as 12 that children that young are being mutilated.
While the researchers at Columbia University also did not break down specific surgeries by age, they did reveal out of dozens of procedures that the most common ones amongst all the patients studied (48,019) were breast reconstructions (21,244), mammaplasties (4,926) hysterectomies (4,489), and “orchitectomies” (testicle removal, 3,425). Notably, the study confirmed with past research that the number of these procedures, surgeries, and interventions are increasing over time. The study stated, “A prior study examining national estimates of inpatient GAS procedures noted that the absolute number of procedures performed nearly doubled between 2000 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2011. In our analysis, the number of GAS procedures nearly tripled from 2016 to 2020.”
Going beyond 2020, other researchers at Komodo Health, Inc., also found the same rate of increase stating that gender dysphoria tripled in minors from 2017 to 2021. In commensurate fashion, the number of gender clinics treating children in the United States has grown from zero to an estimated 200 to 300 clinics in the past 15 years. The first gender clinic for children in America was founded in 2007 at Boston Children’s Hospital where at the time doctors there did not limit candidates for puberty blockers to a “minimal age” but advised children needed to “wait for pubertal signs.”
In 2021, the “gender surgery industry” in the United States was valued at $1.9 billion, and was estimated to be $2.1 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow to $5 billion by 2030. Despite many gender hospitals today touting “the minimum age of 18 as eligibility” to undergo these procedures, these studies and reports show that surgeons are performing them on children younger than 18 years.
As the American medical community sees record profits from irreversibly mutilating children and adults, therapeutic counseling is largely ignored as an alternative treatment to gender dysphoria.
Liberty Counsel has represented several licensed counselors who have used therapeutic counseling to help many people get beyond gender dysphoria. Through Liberty Counsel’s efforts, city ordinances in Florida and Iowa banning this type of counseling have been struck down or repealed preserving the free speech rights of counselors so they can help their clients to reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or gender confusion. Several clients of these counselors have testified under oath that without counseling they would have continued down a dark, irreversible path, and it was the counseling that helped them resolve their health issues to embrace their biological sex.
Counseling for gender dysphoria, which the “gender industry” and media falsely refer to as “conversion therapy,” is actually talk therapy and is a lot like a GPS map system for mental health. The clients tell the counselor the direction in which they want to go, and the counselor helps them reach that destination. Counseling operates from the viewpoint that people do not have to be chained to gender dysphoria or unwanted desires, behaviors, or confusion.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The fact that children are being irreversibly mutilated is appalling. Gender ideology and greed are rotting the medical community to its core making the mutilation of children a billion-dollar industry. This insanity needs to stop, for real science shows that counseling is effective in treating gender dysphoria. Liberty Counsel has successfully defended licensed counselors who have helped people with gender dysphoria and this talk therapy is protected by the First Amendment.”
