Norwegian Agency Pumps Brakes on Medical Intervention for Gender Dysphoria

Last month, a Norwegian independent government agency declared that Norway’s current standards of so-called “gender-affirming” care need to change. The report, published by the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (UKOM), found that using puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in youth lacks scientific basis and carries high risk. The board called for any future standards of treatment to be based on a systematic review of existing research as well as a multidisciplinary approach. 

UKOM’s findings are important for three reasons. First, Norway has now joined the growing list of European countries that are pumping the brakes on harmful treatments for gender dysphoria. Second, these findings only further confirm what we should now know: that chemical and surgical “gender-affirming” interventions are experimental and not evidence-based. Third, and above all, what has happened in Norway should make us commit here and again to protect children’s God-given bodies and to purge medicine of destructive gender ideology.

Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

Senate Committee Passes Bill to Protect Teachers, Students Who Decline to Use Preferred Pronouns

On Wednesday the Senate Education Committee passed a good bill that helps protect students and teachers who decline to use a person’s preferred pronouns at school.

H.B. 1468 by Rep. Wayne Long (R – Bradford) and Sen. Mark Johnson (R – Little Rock) says that a student or teacher cannot not be penalized for declining to address a person by a pronoun that is inconsistent with the person’s biological sex.

As we have reported before, educators in other states have been fired and suspended for declining to use students’ chosen pronouns.

H.B. 1468 would help prevent that from happening in Arkansas.

The bill now goes to the entire Arkansas Senate for a vote.

Will Doctors Be Held Accountable for Her Harm?

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Cole has filed a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente, accusing them of medical malpractice in her so-called “gender transition.” At age 13, Cole was put on puberty blockers and then testosterone. Within three years, she underwent a double mastectomy.  

Over the past decade, the medical community has treated cases of gender dysphoria differently than other mind/body disorders. Typically, such disorders are treated by helping the patient reconcile with his or her body. It is only in the case of gender dysphoria that doctors encourage and facilitate expensive chemical and surgical interventions in the name of “gender-affirming care.” Far from alleviating the dysphoria and related mental health problems, these interventions leave the root problems unaddressed. To follow this path with minors is an especially troubling form of social experimentation. 

Similar lawsuits have been instrumental for creating a course correction elsewhere. Hopefully, Chloe’s case will lead to doctors being held accountable for the harms they have caused and to a course correction here in America as well. 

Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.