Adobe Stock
Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are doubling down on their support for subjecting children to experimental medical treatments following the Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld Tennessee’s law protecting minors from what transgender activists euphemistically call “gender-affirming care.”
AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, M.D. said his organization is “disappointed” in the Court’s decision, framing it as one that “opens the door to further intrusion into patient care and harmful government interference into the practice of medicine.”
That argument has been used for years by an abortion industry that claims pro-life laws are an intrusion into “healthcare” decisions women make with their doctors – even as abortion activists demand government taxpayer funding of abortions.
“All patients deserve access to high-quality, evidence-based medical care,” Mukkamala added. “Decisions about medical treatment must be made through a shared decision-making process between the patient and their physician, based on individual patient needs and in accordance with medical evidence and the standards of good medical practice.”
“The AMA opposes efforts by the government to insert itself into the patient-physician relationship and interfere in clinical decision-making with no regard for the clinical standards of care,” he asserted.
The AMA pointed out that it joined with the AAP and the Endocrine Society in amicus briefs in the Tennessee case.
AAP President Susan J. Kressly, MD, FAAP said her association “remains unwavering in our support for transgender and gender-diverse youth and their access to the same standard of compassionate, evidence-based care as every other child.”
“Gender-affirming care is medically necessary for treating gender dysphoria and is backed by decades of peer-reviewed research, clinical experience, and scientific consensus,” Kressly continued. “Too often mischaracterized as exclusively involving surgery and hormones, this care is provided thoughtfully and with the involvement of multidisciplinary teams of physicians, mental health professionals, families, and most importantly, young people themselves. Denying patients access to this care not only undermines their health and safety, it robs them of basic human dignity.”
Top Biden-Harris health official Dr. Rachel [born Richard] Levine – a man who claims to be a woman – had addressed members of the AAP at their annual conference last year, claiming that states that had passed legislation to protect children from experimental drugs and surgeries were promoting “hatred” and “discrimination.”
Levine had also insisted that “gender-affirming” care is “evidence-based.”
“Gender-affirming care is medical care,” he said in 2022 at the Out for Health Conference. “It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health [WPATH] published evidence-based standards of care more than a decade ago, in 2011, and is planning to release a full update this year.”
In June 2024, however, it was revealed that the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services had pressured WPATH to remove recommended age minimums for gender hormone drugs and surgeries from its draft guidelines in order to make it easier to subject children to such interventions.
Court documents showed that Levine “pressed WPATH to eliminate the age minimums to foster the Biden administration’s pro-‘transgender’ political agenda.”
Echoing Mukkamala’s narrative, Kressly added that the Court’s ruling last week “sets a dangerous precedent for legislative interference in the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship that is at the core of our health system.”
In stark contrast, the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) said it was “grateful” for the Supreme Court’s ruling, one that “affirms the right of states to protect gender-confused and gender-dysphoric children from experimental and irreversible gender ‘transition’ procedures from one sex to the other—or to no sex at all.”
ACPeds Executive Director Dr. Jill Simons noted that her organization’s amicus brief “offered the Court essential medical context to support state efforts to protect vulnerable children by focusing on what is truly best – pediatric care free from transgender ideology.”
Additionally, ACPeds observed that Justice Clarence Thomas cited its work on the harms of medicalized gender transition in his concurring opinion. The organization also credited Thomas with exposing “the political bias behind WPATH’s so-called ‘standards of care.’”
“Internal WPATH files reveal that the scientific evidence not only fails to support but often conflicts with its own published guidance,” ACPeds asserted.
The Supreme Court delivered its landmark ruling last Wednesday in United States v. Skrmetti in a 6-3 decision.
With Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority, the Court held that Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1, which prohibits the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.