The Heritage Foundation has published a lengthy report on “gender-affirming care,” i.e. hormonal and medical interventions for gender-confused persons , and its effect on suicide rates. The study found that, contrary to what gender ideologues claim, providing children and adolescents with easy access to puberty blockers and other cross-sex treatments does not reduce these youths’ chances of suicide. In fact, such interventions might actually increase the likeliness of suicidal thoughts and attempts among young adults, according to the report.
The study is important for a number of reasons. First, it offers a good summary of the many methodological problems with past studies that endorsed gender-affirming care for minors. Most, if not all, of these past studies, for example, relied upon surveys of trans-identifying patients recruited by LGBT activist organizations, and few included gender-dysphoric patients whose problems were resolved without medical intervention. That’s a major problem, considering more than 70% of all minors who struggle with gender dysphoria end up growing out of it naturally.
Moreover, not one study that supported gender-affirming care could point to a statistically significant control group against which to test its findings. For example, one of the most frequently cited studies by gender ideologues, the Tordoff study, attempted to provide a control group of children who were not given access to medical intervention, only to have 80% of the control patients leave before the study had ended. As independent journalist Jesse Singal noted, the study’s authors “offer no explanation” as to why the vast majority of their untreated control group left prematurely and “little reason for us to trust that any observed differences between the groups are attributable to accessing [gender-affirming care] rather than any of a host of other potential confounding factors.”
Another flaw in pro-medical intervention studies is that they fail to account for the fact that gender-confused persons seeking medical and hormonal treatment have to be deemed “psychologically stable” first. (Although, admittedly, this recommended protocol is no longer followed by many providers in the United States). In other words, those suffering from suicidal thoughts are more likely to be denied treatment in the first place on account of their mental state. And past studies made no attempt to determine whether suicidal patients who were denied care were suicidal beforehand or whether their suicidal ideation was directly the result of being denied care.
