The left needs to consider this a warning.
In an op-ed for The Free Press, Jamie Reed, a queer woman with a trans husband, explained her deep regret and guilt after treating transgender kids with life altering medicines and procedures. Her piece titled, “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” should serve as a wake-up-call to the left that thinks gender-affirming procedures aren’t harmful.
Reed worked as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She claimed that the center’s “working assumption” was that the sooner you treat kids' gender dysphoria with life altering measures, the better. Reed’s specific role at the clinic was patient intake and oversight and she saw around 1,000 confused kids during her four year employment at the center.
After seeing the kids leave with “life-altering consequences — including sterility,” Reed quit. “I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care,” she said.
Reed claimed her testimony puts her at personal and professional risk but noted that what’s happening to kids is “morally and medically appalling” and is “far more important than” her “comfort.”
Despite the warnings, Reed acknowledged that young teens aren’t capable of understanding the lifelong effects and issues that would arise from these treatments, which further pushed her skepticism.
Reed exposed many of the terrible things that go on in clinics like these including the “lack of formal protocols for treatment.” The center literally prescribed a cancer drug as a puberty blocker for boys who wanted to be girls. Reed also said kids would hear about others getting gender surgeries or meds and fall into the social contagion to do the same. When she or other employees raised questions or had doubts, they risked being called a “transphobe.”
She also pointed out that many of the patients were on the autism spectrum or claimed that they had other disorders like Tourette syndrome, tic disorders or multiple personalities, all of which she said they didn’t.
That just goes to show how these kids were and are clearly confused and in poor mental health. That doesn’t scream “I’m ready for permanent, life-altering surgeries and treatments” to me. Nonetheless, all the patients needed was a letter of support from a therapist they only had to see once or twice to get a prescription for hormones. Reed noted that in Missouri, only one consenting parent is needed to go ahead with treatment, and the center “always took the side of the affirming parent.”
She encountered a situation where a mother convinced her daughter that she was trans when the child's father protested, the woman went to court in a custody battle over the 11-year-old after . A doctor at the center sided with the mother and so did the court.
At the end of the op-ed, Reed pointed out that this isn’t a political matter. This shouldn’t be a divisive issue. This deals with the safety of our children and shouldn’t result in culture wars.
