A newly released study shows that thousands of American children have undergone gender transition surgery in recent years.
The study is called National Estimates of Gender-Affirming Surgery in the U.S. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Aug. 23, 2023.
The study, however, was conducted between 2016 and 2019.
Overall, the study found that, during this 2016 to 2019 timeframe, 48,019 Americans underwent some form of gender-changing surgery. But, the most disturbing part is what the study shows concerning American children.
What the JAMA study found is that, of the 48,019 Americans who underwent gender-changing surgery between the years 2016 and 2019, 3,678 of these individuals were between the ages of 12 and 18.
It is worth emphasizing the fact that the study did in fact choose to include 18-year-olds in the 12 to 18 age group. Ordinarily, 18 years old is the age of adulthood and therefore would be separated from younger individuals who are not legally considered to be adults. It is not clear why the authors of the study included 18-year-olds in the age group.
But, what this means is that we do not know how many children in the 12 to 17 age group - the non-adult age group - received gender-changing surgeries.
Of the 3,678 individuals in the 12 to 18 age group, 3,215 of them had either a chest or breast procedure.
A little over 400 of them underwent genital transition surgery.
The study found that the number of encounters between medical professionals and patients with gender dysphoria has grown significantly during the time frame in question.
Between 2016 and 2020, the number went from 13,855 to 38,470, which is a 278% increase. During this same time frame, yearly gender-related surgeries increased from 4,552 to 12,818, which is a 282% increase.
The Washington Examiner highlights the fact that "despite the Aug. 23 date of the study, the data stopped in 2019, and the medical movement to transition children has dramatically increased since that point."
In other words, between the end of the study and today, the numbers have likely jumped by an even greater amount. In the case of children, this is particularly disturbing. What makes it disturbing was explained by Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm, which is a medical advocacy group.
Goldfarb said:
The fact that they are asking children to consent to something that they clearly can’t understand and will change lives irrevocably is extremely unfortunate and is the reason European countries have decided to severely curtail this practice.
