British government now treats ‘trans toddlers’
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is launching a new program that will treat children as young as nursery age for gender dysphoria, The Telegraph has reported.
The NHS plans to open seven or eight gender clinics around the country that will collectively see up to 200 new children a month. Treatment will not include mutilative interventions like puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, but rather psychological and neurological assessments for conditions like autism and counseling for the child and their family. It is unclear whether NHS employees will seek to affirm children’s gender confusion or help them overcome it.
Originally, the NHS planned to restrict treatment to children seven and up. But sources say the government caved to gender activists and removed all age limits.
“We know that showing an interest in clothes or toys of the opposite sex – or displaying behaviours more commonly associated with the opposite sex – is reasonably common behaviour in childhood and is usually not indicative of gender incongruence,” NHS guidance said in 2023.
Children naturally outgrow gender confusion
Critics of the initiative have pointed out that roughly 98% of children who complete puberty naturally outgrow gender dysphoria.
“Research shows that pre-adolescent children who feel confused or distressed by the fact of their sex will usually grow out of this stage if they’re sensitively supported, but not when they’re encouraged to believe the unscientific notion that everyone has a ‘gender identity’ that may differ from their sex,” said Helen Joyce, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Sex Matters.
Treatment or grooming?
Joyce also questioned whether this new service is a Trojan horse to groom children for transgenderism or to help steer them away from gender confusion.
“The question for the new NHS hubs is whether they perpetuate the failed ‘affirmation’ model . . . in which case parents should keep their children well away, or whether they offer genuinely holistic care based on evidence, not ideology. If the treatment does more harm than good, the length of the waiting list is irrelevant,” she said.
The new service has already seen around 250 children, including up to 10 children of nursery age. As many as 157 children nine or younger have been referred to the clinics.
