The Post Millennial reported that the largest public school district in the state of Washington offers its students referrals for sex change surgeries and hormone therapy without parental consent. Seattle’s public schools have such material available to their middle and high schoolers. Documents highlighting this practice were obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE). The health centers running these operations highlight the “no cost comprehensive, trauma-informed, and gender-affirming care, conveniently at the school.”
The particular services run the gambit from gender-affirming medications (estrogen, androgen blockers, testosterone, etc.) and injection techniques,” “hormone therapy for adolescents and specialty referrals for younger patients as needed,” to “referrals for gender-affirming surgeries.”
These centers presently do not directly provide puberty blockers as those require “special referrals.” The directives at these centers toward their staff are they “should not disclose a student’s transgender or gender X status to others unless (1) legally required to do so or (2) the student has authorized disclosure” and when “contacting the parents/guardians of a transgender or gender X student and it is unclear whether the student asserts the same gender identity at home, it is best practice to avoid using gender pronouns.”
In Washington state, all of this is legal under the Adolescent Behavioral Health Care Access Act passed in 2019. The law states that it “gives parents and providers more leverage in the treatment of a young person who does not want to or cannot independently seek medical help for a mental illness and/or substance use disorder.”
Washington’s Snohomish County School District officials informed Post Millennial that the age of medical consent is 13 in the state, which means a person aged 13-17 can seek treatment without the consent or knowledge of their parents or guardians. Indeed, back in 2022, one of the journalists for the news outlet pointed out that the “Gender Cards” being given out to students “by local pediatricians” included a section where there is an “option at the bottom for children to decide if a healthcare provider can inform their parents.”
EXCLUSIVE 🧵: The "Gender Card" is being given out by local pediatricians to children in Greater Seattle
In WA, treatments can be given out to minors w/o parental consent including for: Reproductive health, STDs, Substance use, Gender dysphoria, Gender affirming care & more pic.twitter.com/8XO5HRNpHT
— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) July 18, 2022
Note on this section the option at the bottom for children to decide if a healthcare provider can inform their parents
(Continued) pic.twitter.com/YGroBTPKGw
— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) July 18, 2022
The news outlet noted that as of last year, there was “an 853 percent increase in students that identify as non-binary in only three years.”
Transgender-affirming care has its fair share of criticism for being unscientific and counterproductive to the well-being of the patient. An article published by The Heritage Foundation attacked both the hormone therapy approach as well as the surgical approach. It observed that “[s]tudies show that 80% to 95% of gender-dysphoric children eventually grow out of their dysphoria and become comfortable with their bodies after puberty if there is no hormonal or surgical intervention. Moreover, those who undergo sex-reassignment surgery commit suicide at 19 times the rate of the general population, and almost double the rate of transgender-identifying adults overall.”
Another article on The Heritage Foundation’s website said that ideology rather than scientific research was driving the debate over the transgender issue and that the basis for gender-affirming care is highly questionable.
Dr. Jay W. Richards defined what this transgender ideology stood for on Twitter.
Gender ideology: the theory that the sex binary doesn't capture the complexity of the human species, and that human individuals are properly described in terms of an "internal sense of gender" called "gender identity" that may be incongruent with their "sex assigned at birth."
— Jay W. Richards (@DrJayRichards) June 3, 2023