The Australian Christian Lobby has urged Australian MPs to pump the brakes on public hospitals conducting irreversible gender treatments on children, as a tide of concern rises in Australia and around the world.
“State and federal parliaments must investigate the claims about gender clinics,” ACL spokesperson Wendy Francis said, “Particularly as children as young as 10 are being put on puberty blocker drugs and a Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital gender clinic wants funding for child mastectomies with a surge in referrals there and in South Australia.”
“We need these investigations before it is against the law to ask serious, child-focused medical questions,” Mrs Francis cautioned, “Especially given Queensland and Victorian governments’ bullish attitude to ‘conversion therapy’, where anything less than supporting transition will be deemed a crime.”
British psychologists claim young people have been ‘over-diagnosed and then over-medicalised’, saying ‘we fear we have had front-row seats to a medical scandal.’
Australian doctors have cited a higher prevalence of children with autism spectrum disorder traits attending gender identity clinics and two-thirds of children referred to the RCH clinic are girls wanting to be boys. The same clinic has been criticised for its methods, overlooking global concern among practitioners, the role of social contagion in the surge of teenage patients and regretful youth ‘detransitioners’ who complain that clinics skated over the health risks.
“Fast-track approaches to gender dysphoria are life-changing,” Mrs Francis concluded, “Children deserve a comprehensive and cautious approach, not a one-way street to an irreversible gender before they are even an adult.”
