By Liberty Counsel ——Bio and Archives--October 4, 2023
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The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) recently launched the Biological Integrity Initiative that exposes the dangers of medical mutilating procedures on children. Physicians behind the Initiative developed many online informational resources to help parents, teens, health care professionals, schools, and policymakers understand the science behind gender dysphoria and find more “positive” solutions than harming minors with gender-related interventions.
ACPeds is a national medical association with more than 600 members across 47 states specializing in the care of children. According to its website, the organization was founded specifically to positively influence childrearing in society using the best research available, and to remain uninfluenced by “the politically-driven pronouncements of the day.” ACPeds defines the term “biological integrity” as living as “one’s natural, biological self” in both mind and body.
The Initiative’s resources include the latest published studies and data related to child development, gender dysphoria and mental health, and the harms of gender interventions. In addition, fact sheets, videos, a map of current state legislation, and ways to connect with doctors and therapists are also available.
ACPeds President, Dr. Michael Artigues, stated, “The massive push we are seeing for children to become the targets of experimental, life-altering drugs and surgeries is ideological in nature, directly opposed to biological reality, antithetical to good medical practice, and deeply disturbing to doctors who have devoted their lives to ethical, compassionate care for their most vulnerable patients – children.”
According to ACPeds, puberty blockers and hormone treatments in children can be associated with an “increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.” ACPeds also notes that the Australian College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners in the United Kingdom, and the Swedish National Council for Medical Ethics have all determined these procedures in children are “experimental and dangerous.”
ACPeds fact sheet on “Gender Dysphoria and Transgenderism” presents another key finding that shows up to 88 percent of girls and up to 98 percent of boys with gender dysphoria “will desist if their biological integrity is affirmed.” The data also shows that “adolescents can embrace their bodies through counseling alone when it is directed toward underlying psychological issues.”
ACPeds states its physicians will increase testifying across the country on gender dysphoria, begin to publish more research on the topic, and train more health care professionals to speak publicly on the issue using the latest scientific evidence.
In 2021, the “gender surgery industry” in the United States was valued at $1.9 billion, and was estimated to be $2.1 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow to $5 billion by 2030. As the American medical community sees record profits from irreversibly mutilating children and adults, therapeutic counseling is largely ignored as an alternative treatment to gender dysphoria.
Liberty Counsel has represented several licensed counselors who have used therapeutic counseling to help many people get beyond gender dysphoria. Through Liberty Counsel’s efforts, city ordinances in Florida and Iowa banning this type of counseling have been struck down or repealed preserving the free speech rights of counselors so they can help their clients to reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or gender confusion. Several clients of these counselors have testified under oath that without counseling they would have continued down a dark, irreversible path, and it was the counseling that helped them resolve their health issues to embrace their biological sex.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The American College of Pediatricians is doing the right thing by using evidence-based research to help protect children. Children are not lab rats and should not become a social experiment. The medical and counseling professions need to return to sound science to heal rather than harm innocent children.”
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