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 leaving their family home, or even their own bedroom.
Others missed the milestones their peers achieved — from getting that first job to graduating from high school.
Some literally couldn’t look themselves in the mirror, even if they physically looked the part of a boy-turned-girl or vice-versa.
If the kids didn’t say it, their parents often did.
They, too, had been told that a sex change would make their child happy again.
So why did their new son (their old daughter) spend every day crying in the bathroom?
The more kids and families I worked with, the clearer it became that our clinic was ruining young lives.
We ignored or explained away co-morbidities like autism, depression and bipolar disorder while using every new development or difficulty in a kid’s life to justify continuing down the sex-change road.
After four years, when I could no longer stand the cognitive dissonance, I became the industry’s first public whistleblower.
After talking with peers who worked at similar clinics across the country, I believe my experience isn’t the exception — it’s the norm.
Why is the media portrayal of these kids so different?
Part of the answer is junk science.
The studies claiming to show that a lack of treatment leads to mental-health declines are generally so poorly designed, they can’t be trusted.
But an equally important issue is the absolute credulity that kids are reliable reporters of their mental health.
While activists insist that kids simply “know who they are,” reality is more complicated.
In my experience, kids typically find the “treatment brings happiness” mantra of their doctors, nurses and case managers hard to see through.
Could everything they’ve been taught to believe about themselves and their bodies actually be wrong?
And if they do realize that truth, what young person wants to admit they made a huge mistake?
No wonder I saw kids reporting a sunnier outlook while actually descending into deeper darkness.
If only they’d been given real mental-health care, instead of being rushed into destroying their developing bodies.
Trump is therefore protecting children with his executive order restricting children’s access to sex-change treatments.
But the job’s not done.
To follow up, his administration needs to draft the strongest possible regulations, with no loopholes that allow the status quo to continue.
That means following through on pulling federal funds from institutions that persist in child sex-change procedures, denouncing the junk science that misleads the public and eliminating coverage from federal health-insurance programs.
The Justice Department should pursue legal action, suing the pants off those who continue to put children at risk.
And Congress must pass laws allowing kids themselves to sue the doctors and hospitals who abused them — like the bill Sen. Josh Hawley introduced this week.
Having worked in one of those facilities, I believe some of these medical “professionals” will not stop unless they are held to account.
Far from encouraging suicide, Trump has a chance to save children’s lives.
Jamie Reed is a senior fellow at Do No Harm.
