Sweden Breaks With Trans-Health Group Following Alterations in Child Sex-Change Guidelines

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Health authorities in Sweden are moving away from the recommendations of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) regarding child sex-change surgeries.

In a Dec. 14 article published in the Swedish medical journal Lakartidningen, pediatrician Mats Reimer points out that WPATH Standards of Care 8 (SOC8) guidelines that were released earlier this year recommended minors confused about their gender to be presented with affirmation and medical intervention as the first line of treatment. The National Board of Health and Welfare disagrees.

The board has decided to publish updated knowledge support about caring for children with gender dysphoria before the end of 2022, with the new knowledge support advising against puberty blockers, surgery, and sex-change hormones before adulthood.

WPATH’s SOC8 guidelines have “created debate,” Reimer stated. WPATH now no longer specifies a lower age limit for any surgical procedure or drug. In addition, the organization has also coined a new gender identity requiring recognition and care—the eunuch.

The term doesn’t refer to men who have lost testicular function due to accident or illness but transgenders who feel their inner gender must be reflected in a castrated male body.

“SOC8 claims that eunuchs can discover their gender identity as early as childhood, but makes no specific treatment recommendations for young people. Had this been published elsewhere than in a supposedly scientific article, people would have thought that it was satire driving the trans movement,” Reimer wrote.

The board’s outgoing knowledge support on how to care for children with gender dysphoria, dating back to 2015, was based on WPATH’s Standards of Care 7 (SOC7) guidelines.

Changes in Finland

Sweden’s changing stance on transgender treatments comes a couple of years after Finland altered its position on the issue. In Finland, adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria were allowed to access puberty blockers and hormones until 2020.

That year, Finland’s national health care council changed how it dealt with the matter through a new guideline that recommended identity exploration and mental health treatment for people going through gender dysphoria.

These measures are to be taken as the first step when dealing with such individuals to ensure that any psychological issues they face are addressed. Sweden also is now beginning to take similar measures.

“In Swedish healthcare, child psychiatry will continue to be responsible for treating those under the age of 18 who experience gender incongruity and suffer from it. Care will now primarily consist of psychological support to help the youth live with the healthy body they were born with,” Reimer wrote in the article.

US Situation

In the United States, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with promoting transgenderism. In a Dec. 13 remark, Biden insisted that “racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia—they’re all connected.” The president also criticized laws passed by states that restrict gender transitioning procedures for children.

Many schools have begun teaching children transgender ideology. The Seattle Public Schools has published a lesson plan that instructs fourth-graders to write letters giving advice to a boy who "knew that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”

The San Francisco Unified School District has instructed teachers that they don’t have to inform parents before teaching children lessons on gender identity and transgenderism.

Meanwhile, the American public seems unhappy with what the transgender movement has become. In an interview with NTD’s Capitol Report, Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, said that 75 percent of respondents in a poll believe the movement has gone “too far.”