Why Canada could be the last holdout for trans pseudoscience

Canada seems determined to be the last country in the West clinging to ‘gender medicine’ for kids. While the US, UK, Sweden, Italy and others are banning puberty blockers and other dangerous procedures, the Great White North remains committed to this increasingly discredited medical fraud.

There is only one place in Canada that’s resisting the trans othodoxy: Alberta. The province, which is governed by the United Conservative Party, recently took steps to prevent the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on minors, as well as surgeries like mastectomies. ‘Alberta introduces Canada’s harshest anti-trans policies yet’, read the headline in Xtra, a Canadian ‘LGBTQ2S+’ online magazine.

If ‘harshest anti-trans policies’ means protecting women and children, then that is precisely what Alberta’s Conservatives are trying to do. In October, premier Danielle Smith introduced three changes to advance this objective. They include the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, which bans males from competing against females, and an amendment to the Education Act to ensure that parents are notified if their child uses a different name or pronouns at school. Then there is the Health Statutes Amendment Act, which prohibits sex-reassignment surgery for minors, as well as the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to anyone under the age of 16.

This need for each of these laws should be obvious. They follow major, systematic reviews of ‘gender-affirming care’ in Sweden, Finland, the US, the UK and even Canada – all of which reduced the arguments of trans activists to rubble. Of these investigations, undoubtedly the most significant was last year’s Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England. It concluded that there is no ‘reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices’ about medical transitioning. It led directly to the closure of the scandal-plagued Tavistock clinic in London. Last month, a 409-page report published by the US Department of Health and Human Services essentially reinforced the findings of the Cass Review.

Clearly, the bulk of Canadian doctors either haven’t read, or refuse to accept, these reports. This became apparent last month, when the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) announced that it intends to file a constitutional challenge to Alberta’s Health Statutes Amendment Act on the basis it undermines ‘the freedom of conscience of physicians’. ‘This legislation has put me and many of my colleagues in a state of moral crisis’, wailed Jake Donaldson, a Calgary-based physician.

The CMA’s intervention warrants closer scrutiny, not least because of its blatant hypocrisy. In 2020, Canada’s then attorney general, David Lametti, tried to make it illegal for doctors to question a child’s ‘gender identity’, doing so under the banner of banning ‘conversion therapy’. In the CMA’s, this did not apparently violate the ‘freedom of conscience’ of Canadian doctors. Yet preventing doctors from offering drugs that arrest the natural physical development of minors, render them sterile and permanently disfigure their bodies supposedly does. Go figure.

Donaldson was at least right about one thing. ‘These patients are a vulnerable group that already face significant and disproportionate discrimination, violence and mental-health challenges’, he said. These patients are indeed vulnerable. They are minors who don’t understand the very serious repercussions of the path they are being led down by trusted authorities, and are in no position to consent to such drastic, dangerous and permanent measures.

Instead of using arguments based on evidence, doctors like Donaldson instead prefer a form of emotional blackmail. Last month, in response to the Alberta bills, he cited a study claiming that US states with restrictive gender laws experienced ‘significant increases’ in suicide attempts in transgender groups. This is bogus, to put it mildly. Research purporting to show that hormonal and surgical interventions improve mental health or reduce suicidality is, to quote one expert, ‘methodologically weak, lacking control groups or long-term follow-up’.

In other words, it is baseless to assert that people will kill themselves without these treatments. Rather, it is a politically motivated tactic that amounts to fear-mongering. In recent years, we have seen this type of argument used repeatedly in the form of accusations that those of us challenging trans ideology have ‘blood on our hands’.

But it is doctors who offer these treatments to minors who really do have blood on their hands. It is a complete abandonment of medical ethics, and as unscientific as it is unethical. Yet in Canada, doctors are fighting for the right to destroy the bodies and lives of countless youth. Canada’s bizzarro world reigns.

Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and the host of The Same Drugs podcast.