Dr. Michelle Cretella Decades of social science data demonstrates that children reared by their biological parents in a loving marriage fare best across all measures of health – even into adulthood.This is especially true in regard to decreasing high risk behaviors like the use of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and early sexual debut. In short, a child’s family structure and degree of parental involvement is the most critical health factor in a child’s life. One would then assume that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), whose motto is “Dedicated to the health of all children,” promotes evidence-based health policies that are pro-parent and pro-family. Sadly, this is not the case.
Since the early 1970s, the AAP has increasingly abandoned both science and medical ethics, in favor of leftist social agendas that undermine parents, threaten children’s health, and — in the case of unborn children — their very lives. For example, in March of 1972, 10 months before Roe v. Wade, the AAP acknowledged that our patients’ lives begin at fertilization. Following Roe v. Wade, however, the AAP increasingly embraced adolescent girls’ right to abortion without parental consent. This position devalues the lives of our unborn patients at a time of unprecedented advancements in fetal medicine, increases teen girls’ risk for breast cancer and other harms, and also undermines parents.
In fact, the AAP has long promoted an adolescent right to confidentiality in healthcare beginning as early as 11 or 12 years old. This confidentiality centers around matters of sexuality (including sexual identity, gender identity, contraception and abortion), drug and alcohol addiction, mental health treatment, and more recently, vaccination. The AAP even facilitates adolescent confidentiality by training health professionals to bill insurance for these confidential services without disclosing the real service charges to the parents.
Perhaps one of the most egregious issues affecting parents is the AAP’s transgender intervention policy for gender-confused youth. Since 2018, the AAP has emotionally blackmailed parents to promote the use of social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions for all gender confused youth, regardless of age, claiming that to fail to do so will cause these youth to commit suicide. However, when it comes to suicide rates among transgender -identified youth, AAP fails to share with parents that they are at no more risk of suicide than are children with other diagnoses, including depression, anxiety, autism, eating disorders and ADHD.
According to respected gender identity expert, psychologist James Cantor, who fact-checked the AAP’s transgender policy, “ …not only does the AAP fail to include any of the actual outcomes literature on such cases, but it also misrepresents the contents of its citations, which repeatedly said the very opposite of what AAP attributed to them.” In other words, the AAP ignored studies demonstrating that 75-95% of minors with gender incongruence resolve by adulthood and lied about the conclusions of the studies it did cite.
Let the research speak for itself.
Ninety percent of all suicide victims have a diagnosed mental disorder. There is no evidence that trans-identified children who commit suicide are any different. Suicide prevention among trans-identified youth should involve the same approach used with other youth, namely, the evaluation and treatment of underlying psychological challenges or traumas. Every threat of suicide should be taken seriously; but it cannot dictate its own standard of care. Puberty blockers, hormones and cosmetic surgical interventions are not suicide prevention.
Parents and policy makers interested in a professional pediatric organization whose policies are grounded in the moral principle of “First, do no harm” and science, rather than social agendas and economic incentive, should visit the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). ACPeds philosophy and science is “The Best for Children. Protecting the Child by Preserving the Family and Honoring Life”.
