Transgender Surgical Procedures on Minors: Raw Numbers
“But no one is doing transgender surgical procedures on minors!”
Let’s go to the tale of the tape. This study just came out and here are the numbers for Gender Affirming Surgeries (GAS) over the past three years:
- A total of 48 019 patients who underwent GAS were identified, including 25 099 (52.3%) who were aged 19 to 30 years. The most common procedures were breast and chest procedures, which occurred in 27 187 patients (56.6%), followed by genital reconstruction (16 872 [35.1%]) and other facial and cosmetic procedures (6669 [13.9%]). The absolute number of GAS procedures rose from 4552 in 2016 to a peak of 13 011 in 2019 and then declined slightly to 12 818 in 2020. Overall, 25 099 patients (52.3%) were aged 19 to 30 years, 10 476 (21.8%) were aged 31 to 40, and 3678 (7.7%) were aged 12 to 18 years. When stratified by the type of procedure performed, breast and chest procedures made up a greater percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients, while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients.
Feel free to take a look at the study. There are limitations. The fact, however, is that surgeries on minors for GAS are happening. The debate is whether it should be allowed as these people are still minors! They cannot get a tattoo or vote but they can get life-altering procedures?
Now discuss amongst yourselves.
How common is it for doctors who express reservations about mutilating surgery on minors to incur problems or penalties, I wonder?
You are including 18 year olds in the “minor” category (c’mon Doug, you’re smarter than that)
Yes, because that is the way it was broken down and stratisfied. My overall point is that there are GAS procedures happening to minors. No question about it.
18 years old is still quite young for the capacity to make major, life-changing decisions about elective surgeries that will permanently affect physical appearance, sexual response, and reproductive capabilities.
As long as 18 years old is old enough to make major, life-changing decisions about getting shot at and blown up, I won’t criticize an 18 year old’s right to make a decision to get her balloons deflated (as much as I may disagree with it) any more than I would her right to decide whom to vote for (as much as I may disagree with that, too).
Free country and all that.
For that reason, I find it unfortunate that these statistics subsume 18 year olds with minors, and I also have to wonder whether the people who compiled the statistics were trying to hide something, as, in general, I have found that statistics compiled with odd cut-off points are usually manipulated.
In this case, considering the source (JAMA), I would imagine that the authors are trying to hide something alarming about the number of minors having some of these procedures (perhaps a single type of procedure that is much more common among minors than the others).
I suspect we may never know.
Good catch on finding this article, Doug. I ran out of Zofran, so I can’t read JAMA anymore.
Sir Lance-a-lot, I don’t want to invalidate your point, but I do think that as doctors we should be more concerned about the developmental age of our patients rather than their status as legal age of majority. Concur with the need for Zofran. Cheers,
Sir Larry