Avoiding Malpractice Lawsuits: Transgender Health Group Admits Reason for Removing Age Minimums for Genital Mutilation, Chemical Castration

Doctors avoiding malpractice lawsuits is the reason behind the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) releasing new medical guidelines removing age minimums for children identifying as transgender going through genital mutilation procedures.

As Breitbart News reported, WPATH released its new guidance in early September with lowered age minimums, only to remove “suggested minimal ages for gender-affirming medical and surgical treatment for adolescents” entirely in a correction one week later.

Such “gender-affirming” procedures — a phrase used to camouflage the grotesque nature of many of the procedures — include double mastectomies, female and male genital mutilation and removal, facial feminization and masculinization, hormone treatments and puberty blockers that cause chemical sterilization, and social transitioning (e.g. using “preferred” pronouns and names).

The correction was made with little to no explanation from WPATH, but a Sunday live-streamed annual conference showed the intent was to give doctors the slack needed to avoid malpractice lawsuits.

“We were thinking, and it was scary for me, about the potential uses of the chapter for legal and insurance contexts,” Amy Tishelman, lead author of the new guidance’s chapter on children, said. “What we didn’t want to do was create a chapter that would make it more likely that practitioners would be sued because they weren’t following exactly what we said.”

It appears the non-defined age limitations might give doctors enough legal ambiguity to avoid malpractice suits for irreversibly damaging the bodies of children.

“We wanted there to be some clinician judgment without being at risk for being held in court for not sticking completely to these standards,” Tishelman continued. “So we did write them in a way I think so that there is leeway, that we recommend things, but we suggest that clinicians use their judgment about what to do in therapy situations and assessment situations so that they can use individualized clinical judgment and not face malpractice suits.”

Tishelman was previously at Boston Children’s Hospital, directing their Clinical Research at the Gender Multispecialty Service, which offers services to children as young as three years old and a “full suite of surgical options for transgender teens.”

That ideology is reflected in WPATH’s guidance, which recommends that puberty blockers and hormone treatments can begin at the start of puberty (around ages nine to eleven for girls, and eleven for boys).

WPATH is considered the leading transgender health care organization with its guidance for gender dysphoric individuals being widely used in American, British, and Canadian hospitals. The group also influences health insurance policies and other health organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.