Helena Kerschner before detransitioning and after

Our society is carrying out a huge social and medical experiment on our children, and doing so with little medical evidence to justify it. Hundreds of children, even pre-pubescent children, are “coming out” as transgender, and their parents and doctors are administering puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and even surgery in the name of “affirmative care.” Affirmative care basically means that if a child says he or she is transgender, then parents and doctors are obliged to begin transitioning them, regardless of age or ability to properly consent. Sadly, many of these children realize too late that they have made a tragic mistake.

Support for affirmative care is found from both the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Medical professionals to whom parents bring their child to discuss gender dysphoria are quick to recommend and initiate affirmative care, even with little to no psychological evaluation. In the case of Helena Kerschner, when she was 18 and transitioning from female to male, she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic and reports that she received a dose of testosterone from a nurse practitioner that represented four times the usual starting dose – without ever seeing a doctor.

Parents are made to fear that, if they don’t go along with transitioning their child, then their child is at risk for self-harm or suicide, but the risk of such will decrease if the child is allowed to transition. This isn’t backed up by the research. I am convinced, and this is only my opinion, that our political/social culture encourages parents to regard having a transgendered child as something of a point of pride, sort of like a medal they get to wear on their chests to prove how progressive they are. As such, there are parents who seem eager to begin transitioning their child at the slightest hint that their daughter might prefer playing with trucks, or their son gets a whim one day to wear a dress. More often, parents are genuinely confused about how to react, so they rely on medical experts, who are too often too quick to begin the process of transitioning a child.

The number of children declaring themselves transgender has exploded in recent years. Sometimes this happens very quickly, in what medical professionals call “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” The vast majority of these children are girls who say they are now boys. Experts are concerned that this is because girls are highly influenced by social expectations. Also, schools that teach Critical Race Theory cause some girls to feel guilty about being White and, therefore, privileged, so they declare themselves trans in an effort to identify with a marginalized group and earn the status that comes with being a socially recognized victim.

The New York Post story linked to above tells the story of two young girls, Chloe Cole and Helena Kerschner, who transitioned from female to male during adolescents. Chloe was 12 when she decided she was a boy and informed her parents when she was 13. Explaining her motivation, Chloe says that, after joining Instragram at 11 years old, “I started being exposed to a lot of LGBT content and activism. I saw how trans people online got an overwhelming amount of support, and the amount of praise they were getting really spoke to me because, at the time, I didn’t really have a lot of friends of my own.” Her parents took her to her doctor and the process for transitioning via affirmation care began almost immediately, with little hesitation or psychological evaluation, including years of testosterone shots. She even received a double mastectomy at the age of 15. Only one year after surgery, at 16, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. Now 17, she regrets her transitioning and is concerned that the impact on her body will leave her scarred for life and possibly infertile.

Helena admits she was highly influenced by the trans community on social media, especially Tumblr. She found in that community friends she did not find in her school or neighborhood. She began transitioning at the age of 14. She reports feeling a lot of pressure to transition. “The community was very social justice-y,” she says. “There was a lot of negativity around being a cis, heterosexual, white girl, and I took those messages really, really personally.” Helena reports, “My dysphoria collided with my general depression issues and body image issues. I just came to the conclusion that I was born in the wrong body and that all my problems in life would be solved if I transitioned.”

More and more young people are becoming “detransitioners,” that is, those who transitioned from one gender to the other and now regret having done so, and desire to return to their biological gender. Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist and a transgender woman, is worried that the phenomena of detransitioners reveals a medical profession that is too quick to initiate transition for young people without taking proper steps to ensure that other factors are not at play. She says, “I’m concerned that the rise of detransitioners is reflective of some young people who have progressed through their gender journey very, very quickly. When other issues important to a child are not fully addressed [before transition], then medical professionals are failing children.”

Dr. Marcus Evans was the Clinical Director of Adult and Adolescent Services at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, a mental health center funded by the UK government and where many young people go for the treatment of gender dysphoria. But Dr. Evans resigned in 2019 over concerns that young people were being transitioned too quickly, that doctors were choosing a “medicalization” route to treat dysphoria without properly assessing psychological factors. “I saw children being fast-tracked onto medical solutions for psychological problems,” Dr. Evans says, “and when kids get on the medical conveyor belt, they don’t get off. But the politicization of the issue was shutting down proper clinical rigor. That meant quite vulnerable kids were in danger of being put on a medical path for treatment that they may well regret.”

That, quite frankly, is what this is all about: politics and social policy. The politics and social policy of the West has embraced the LGBTQ+ agenda so thoroughly that any effort to step back and pause before proceeding with transitioning anyone, even children, is regarded as transphobic and bigoted. Even preventing the introduction of LGTBQ+ ideology to first through third graders is regarded as harmful and unacceptable. Our children are guinea pigs in a massive medical/psychological experiment, with no guardrails, to satisfy the political and social agenda of LGBTQ+ ideologues. Sadly, too many medical professionals are playing along, including the APA and the AAP. Those professionals and organizations that ought to safeguard the health and wellbeing of children have abandoned that role in favor of a full-speed-ahead adoption of the transgender ideology, applying the weight and credibility of their “expertise” to justify doctors transitioning their young patients and parents to blindly follow along according to the advice of the doctors they ought to be able to trust.

Actions have consequences. The consequences of this horrific experiment will be long felt in our social and cultural milieu. What we are doing to our children cannot be justified, no matter how loudly the activists holler or how profoundly the experts pontificate. Our children are too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of the LGBTQ+ ideology. It is the responsibility of parents to resist the ever-strengthening tide of social and political pressure and get their children the help they need when struggling with gender dysphoria. It is the responsibility of doctors to resist the pressure to push children and their parents into a process that is inappropriate, dangerous, and potentially catastrophic for a child’s future. It is the only responsible thing to do.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.