The National Health Service in England started restricting gender treatments for children this month, making it the fifth European country to limit the medications because of a lack of evidence of their benefits and concern about long-term harms.
In 2020, Finland’s health agency restricted the care by recommending psychotherapy as the primary treatment for adolescents with gender dysphoria. Two years later, Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases.”
In December, regional health authorities in Norway designated youth gender medicine as a “treatment under trial,” meaning hormones will be prescribed only to adolescents in clinical trials. And in Denmark, new guidelines being finalized this year will limit hormone treatments to transgender adolescents who have experienced dysphoria since early childhood.
Even the original Dutch clinic is facing pressure to limit patients receiving the care. In December, a public documentary series in the Netherlands questioned the basis of the treatments. And in February, months after a far-right political party swept an election in a country long known as socially liberal, the Dutch Parliament passed a resolution to conduct research comparing the current Dutch approach with that of other European countries.
Other countries have seen more overt attacks on transgender rights and health care. In 2020, Hungary’s Parliament passed a law banning gender identity changes on legal documents. Last year, Russia banned legal gender changes as well as gender-related medical care, with one lawmaker describing gender surgeries as the “path to the degeneration of the nation.”
In France this year, a group of conservative legislators introduced a bill to ban doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones, with punishments of two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros, or about $32,600. And on Monday, the Vatican condemned gender transitions as threats to human dignity.
Source: Youth Gender Medications Limited in England, Part of Big Shift in Europe – The New York Times