The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been ordered to provide the state of Florida with evidence explaining why it supports child sex changes, and the documentation divulging the process the medical association went through in order to reach that stance.
The AAP chose to support four trans minors in their legal challenge of Florida’s ban on gender transition procedures. Now they need to provide scientific evidence to back it up.
Judge Carl J. Nichols ordered the AAP to hand over:
All documentation related to how it establishes new guidelines and policy positions,
Any guidelines or policy positions on gender-affirming care, including how these guidelines or policies were drawn up, and
All official communications that took place within the AAP regarding its policies and guidelines on gender-affirming care to be provided.
The AAP official position was declared in a policy paper in 2018. It requires clinicians immediately affirm a child’s self-declared transgender identity and to push for early medical intervention. There has already been some push-back. Last year, five members submitted a resolution requesting a thorough systematic review of the available evidence for gender-affirming care, but instead, the AAP took enacted a new rule which prevented members from supporting the resolution or contributing to the discussion, preemptively suppressing debate by not allowing comments.
This case will be one to watch. Not only will the general public be able to see how much political ideology and money-making drove these policy decisions, but also how little evidence there is undergirding gender-affirming care.
Canadian sexologist, James Cantor published a scathing rebuttal of the official position of the AAP, debunking it point by point, saying, “the AAP statement is a systematic exclusion and misrepresentation of entire literatures. Not only did AAP fail to provide extraordinary evidence, it failed to provide evidence at all."
Grab some popcorn, this should be fun.