Mother of Trans Child Says She Felt ‘Bullied’ By Doctors Who Provide Children’s ‘Gender-Affirming’ CareMadeline Leesman
April 04, 2023
A mother of a child who underwent irreversible transgender health services said that she felt “bullied” by doctors into allowing her underage son to receive a puberty blocker in his arm. And, the same doctors refused to remove it when her child began thinking about suicide, she said.
The mother, Caroline, spoke to The Free Press’ Emily Yoffe about her and her son’s experience at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Her son, “Casey,” received a puberty blocker called Supprelin in his arm to “help relieve his psychological distress” surrounding his gender at 14 years old.
“Casey” soon experienced a “devastating decline” from the drug. He went from earning all As and Bs in school to Ds and Fs. He found it “impossible” to get out of bed in the morning and was absent from school so much that he was required to attend an official meeting about his truancy with a circuit court judge. He gained 30 pounds, and, during a therapy session, revealed that he’d been thinking about killing himself.
At that point, Caroline wrote an email to the clinic demanding the removal of the puberty blocker from her son’s arm. The doctors disagreed, and to this day, Casey still has Supprelin in his arm.
In February, Jamie Reed, a former staffer at the clinic, came forward to The Free Press in a bombshell report stating how “morally and medically appalling” the treatment at the clinic was. Specifically, Reed noted that the center fast-tracked transgender care for kids and that the whole operation felt like “building the plane while we are flying it,” which Townhall covered. In response, the clinic put out a statement saying they were “alarmed by the allegations” and “already begun the process of looking into the situation to ascertain the facts.”
Caroline’s sister, a nurse, sent her the story. Caroline said she felt “validated” and then came forward to the Press. In an online call, writer Emily Yoffe said that she spoke with Casey and that he shared with her the social contagion surrounding transgender identities among young kids (via The Free Press):
Casey is charming, intelligent, and thoughtful. He enjoys the arts, participating in a range of musical extracurriculars. Due to the puberty blocker, he seems younger than his 16 years, with a hairless face and the voice of a young teen boy.
Casey expressed no discomfort with his sex as a child, but when he turned 13, he said, he discovered through friends and online that “transgenderism was a thing.” He started researching this and felt, “Holy crap! You can do that?” Soon he declared he was “gender fluid.” Casey explains, “This means that my gender changed based on the day. Then it got to the point where I was never feeling masculine or like a boy.” After about six months of being gender fluid, Casey says, “I decided that I was a fully transgender girl. Like I wanted to present as a girl and I wanted people to see me as a girl. So, I started to socially transition. I was going by a different name and using she/her pronouns.”
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Source:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/04/04/the-free-press-transgender-mom-n2621490
