On Friday VICE News published a video regarding Arkansas’ Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
Among other things, VICE’s video features a child in Arkansas who started receiving hormone blockers at eight years old.
The video also includes an interview with Planned Parenthood’s Director of Transgender Care in Little Rock.
Like many outlets, VICE mischaracterizes the SAFE Act as a measure “banning all gender affirming medical care for trans youth.”
In reality, the SAFE Act simply protects children from sex-reassignment procedures, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never approved puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition. Doctors are giving these hormones to kids off-label, in a manner the FDA never intended.
Researchers do not know the long term effects puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can have on kids.
That is why many experts agree that performing sex-reassignment procedures on children — even giving them puberty blockers and hormones — is experimental, at best.
That’s also why earlier this month a major hospital in Sweden announced it would no longer administer puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children.
The hospital’s new policy even recognizes that giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids “should be regarded as experimental.”
The SAFE Act is a good law that protects children in Arkansas from being subjected to surgeries and procedures that can leave them sterilized and permanently scarred. That’s something to celebrate.
