Im a trans-clinic whistleblower Trump is right to ban sex changes for kids

Is President Trump pushing gender-confused kids to commit suicide? This shocking claim hit mainstream and social media within minutes of the president’s Jan.28 executive order banning federal funding for child sex-change treatments, among other strong policies that will make those treatments less likely.The way the argument goes, if kids can’t get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, their mental health will deteriorate to the point of no return.But as I’ve seen while working with more than 1,000 such kids, there are deeper reasons why they’re so unhappy — and giving them powerful experimental drugs and irreversible surgeries is more likely to worsen their condition. As a lifelong Democrat who has many reservations about Donald Trump, I can still admit that these kids need the protections he just announced.Now, he needs to make sure his order is fully enacted and vigorously enforced.From 2018 to 2022, I worked as a case manager for the Washington University Transgender Center at St.

Louis Children’s Hospital.My responsibilities included both patient intake and oversight of their medical journey, so I worked with virtually all the young people who walked through the clinic’s doors.Like everyone who worked there, I firmly believed that if we didn’t quickly move them toward a medically induced sex change, they’d soon find themselves contemplating suicide.

That’s what the science said, right?At first, I had no doubts about the morality of my work.But as kids kept coming back for follow-up check-ins and treatment — almost every kid who begins puberty blockers goes on to receive cross-sex hormones — I realized something was very wrong.When my colleagues and I asked about their mental health, they usually reported that it was the same or better.

But as soon as we dug deeper, it became clear that the real answer was no — that their mental anguish was worsening.I lost track of how many times I learned that a kid was no longer l...