French Senators from the center-right party Les Républicains have issued a new report which recommends a ban on gender affirming medical care for those under the age of 18. The 340-page report comes in advance of a recommendation by France's High Authority of Health which is expected sometime soon.

A lengthy investigation initiated by centre-right Les Républicains senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio has just been made public. It is alarmed by what has been described as “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”—namely sex reassignment in minors, made possible by the administration of puberty blockers and surgery.

The report, which is detailed and well-argued, points to a number of abuses by health professionals, indoctrinated by a “trans-affirmative” ideology and subject to the influence of experienced trans activist associations. The report’s authors accuse these associations of unreasonably encouraging gender transition in minors via an intense propaganda campaign on social media...

The Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS)—the French government body responsible for regulating health policies—is working on the issue, but the senators, believing that the danger is palpable, want to speed up the timetable, and announced that they would propose a bill before the summer to prohibit any medical gender transition before the age of 18 in France. The aim would be to prevent doctors, who currently have virtually complete discretion in this area, from administering puberty blockers and cross-reactive hormones, followed by sex reassignment surgery, to minors being treated for ‘gender dysphoria.’ 

In France, a 2021 document called the "circulaire Blanquer" was issued to schools. It recommended that schools respect students choice of names and pronouns even if that meant keeping the change secret from the child's parents. The European Conservative published a story about once such case two years ago.

It all started with a slightly violent teenage crisis on the part of her young son. He began by attacking his mother for her positions, which were considered too conservative, and gradually adopted the media’s arguments on gender theory and wokism. He then revealed his homosexual inclinations, which were eventually accepted by his parents despite their initial shock. But then things got out of hand: the young man announced that he was transgender and had felt like a girl for years. For his part, the son perceived himself in danger within his ‘transphobic’ family. 

He became more and more withdrawn, introducing a rupture in family relations that had always been serene and open to discussion. Life for the boy changes: the young boy suffers, has dark thoughts, thinks about suicide, scares himself. Seeing a psychologist is complicated, as he fears that they want to “prevent” him from becoming a girl. He runs away from home and displays cult-like behaviour. He uses highly constructed rhetoric and discourse on trans-identity issues, with stereotyped answers. His judgement is impaired, he tries to cut off his family—his parents, his brother. He spends an increasing amount of time on websites that reinforce his trans-identity—to the detriment of his sleep. Finally, he takes refuge in families that he considers benevolent because they support him in his gender transition project. The parents, as they are cast in his drama, have become antagonists.

The poor parents are helpless, because the slightest attempt to keep a link with their son, to care for him in his anxiety, is turned against them because of the well-oiled administrative and social machine that sees them above all as guilty: guilty of not understanding the problems linked to trans-identity, or guilty of transphobia. The social services get involved. They consider refusing to change the young man’s name, or making a remark about his female clothes not being adapted to his morphology, as abuse. The family doctor is appalled at what is happening to the family, but is dismissed as ‘transphobic.’ 

Beyond her child’s suffering, what strikes this mother is the gigantic public conspiracy that has been set up to support her son—a child who is clearly suffering—on the path to gender transition, to the point of doing everything to keep them apart, obscuring the issue with silence and concealment.

The mother eventually learned that teachers at the school had known her son was using a female name for a year but had decided not to tell her.

All of this follows the decision by the British NHS to limit the use of puberty blockers on children. The Associated Press reports today that decision is having repercussions in at least two US states.

U.S. legislators and statehouse bills seeking to restrict transgender health care have often cited European science and policy, from countries including Finland, France, Sweden and Norway, as well as the U.K.

In Kansas, state Sen. Beverly Gossage cited England’s new policy last week when briefing fellow Republicans on a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors...

In Georgia, Republican state Sen. Ben Watson pointed to Europe as he pushed a ban on gender-affirming care for children: “In light of the information and what’s been going on, not only in Europe, in the U.K., but here in the United States, this is the change that I’m proposing.”

But U.S. medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics continue to support gender-affirming care for minors. In France as well there are already opponents of the new report who are pushing back on the recommendations. The debate over this is far from over and it appears the US continues to be the most strident in promoting this new ideology.