DeSantis Says He Would Ban Irreversible Sex Change Operations

Florida Health Department claims 'gender-affirming treatments' at 'high risk of doing harm’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displays the signed Parental Rights in Education bill flanked by elementary school students during a news conference at Classical Preparatory school in Shady Hills, Fla., on March 28, 2022. Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that he’d be willing to ban sex change operations in a podcast interview on May 2, following a Florida health department statement that gender reassigning treatments are not recommended for children and adolescents.

“You can’t get a tattoo if you’re 12 years old. When they say ‘gender-affirming care,’ what they mean, a lot of times is, you are really, you’re castrating a young boy, you’re sterilizing a young girl, you’re doing mastectomies for these very young girls,” DeSantis said on The Truth With Lisa Boothe podcast, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report (pdf) that supported gender-affirming practices.

“80 percent of the cases resolve themselves as they grow up, and so you’re doing things that are permanently altering them, and then they’re not gonna be able to reverse that, and so I don’t think it’s appropriate for kids at all.”

DeSantis said that there should be additional protections granted to children besides the guidance (pdf) issued by the Florida Department of Health (DOH) because “there’s a concerted effort in society to push these kids in to do some type of medical intervention.”

Under Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, the DOH stated that social gender transition and gender reassignment surgery should not be treatment options for children; puberty blockers and hormone therapy must not be prescribed to anyone under 18; and kids suffering from gender dysphoria must be provided with social support and seek counseling.

Based on the currently available evidence, “encouraging mastectomy, ovariectomy, uterine extirpation, penile disablement, tracheal shave, the prescription of hormones which are out of line with the genetic make-up of the child, or puberty blockers, are all clinical practices which run an unacceptably high risk of doing harm,” according to DOH press release.

Claiming improvement in “overall quality of life for transgender and gender diverse youth,” the HHS currently recommends hormone therapy from early adolescence and gender-affirming surgeries on an individual case-by-case basis.

However, the DOH maintains that “systematic reviews on hormonal treatment for young people show a trend of low-quality evidence, small sample sizes, and medium to high risk of bias.”

According to a study by Dr. David Schwartz, cited by the DOH, pharmacological and surgical interventions in the treatment of gender dysphoric youth “is mistaken both clinically and ethically,” and is not suggested based on the “first, do no harm” health care principle.

Given the transitory nature of the issue, Schwartz recommends psychotherapy as the best treatment option instead of the non-reversible surgical procedures.