by Laurel Duggan
The American Medical Association (AMA) pledged to ramp up its support for cross-sex medical interventions for minors with gender identity issues in a resolution its House of Delegates approved this week.
The AMA already supported cross-sex medical interventions for children, but the new resolution makes this stance more proactive in response to state-level restrictions on such procedures; it passed Monday, according to the Endocrine Society, which sponsored the resolution. The organization pledged to work with special interest groups to fight state and federal limits on cross-sex medical procedures, which it euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.”
The resolution was co-authored by two medical students, Charles Adams and Delia Sosa, both of whom are transgender, according to MedPage Today. The co-authors expressed concerns that state restrictions on cross-sex treatments for children endangered people’s lives.
“This is a life and death matter,” Charles Adams told the outlet.
“It’s trying to erase our existence,” Delia Sosa said. “So this [resolution] really is important, because it says that one of the largest medical associations in the entire world says ‘We stand behind trans people. We want to make sure that not only do they have access to healthcare, but that the people that are supporting them are also safe.’”
The AMA pledged to advocate against all adverse medical licensing actions and liability, including responsibility for future medical costs, for doctors and healthcare facilities that perform cross-sex medical interventions, as well as against all criminal and legal penalties against patients and parents seeking cross-sex medical interventions for minors in the resolution. It also expressed its intent to communicate with the Federation of State Medical Boards about the importance of protecting access to these procedures.
AMA President-Elect @DoctorJesseMD on anti-trans healthcare: "We simply will not stand for the government coming in to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.” https://t.co/6Mgceqxc4X
— AMA (@AmerMedicalAssn) May 12, 2023
The AMA recently elected its first openly gay president, Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, who has boasted of promoting the interests of transgender people throughout his career.
“LGBT health equity has been a driver of a lot of my activity in medicine and policy for a number of years. While I was deployed I was able to work to help share the lives of transgender service people while in service,” Ehrenfeld said, according to TMJ4 Milwaukee.
The resolution updates the AMA’s policy on “Medical Necessity for Treatment of Gender Dysphoria” by stating that surgeries and other treatments are medically necessary for gender incongruence rather than merely for gender dysphoria; gender incongruence is the sense of one’s gender identity not matching their biological sex and body, and dysphoria is the discomfort that arises from that condition, according to the resolution.
The resolution references data points put out by LGBT activist organizations including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to demonstrate the growing restrictions on youth sex changes.
The AMA did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Laurel Duggan is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Megan Brock contributed to this report.
Photo “Doctor and Child” by Pavel Danilyuk.
