FaithWire – Earlier this month, the wife of a Lutheran pastor posted an update to her Facebook page, announcing her 11-year-old child — a transgender female — endured something “hard and scary” at the beginning of November. One of Jamie and the Rev. Christopher Bruesehoff’s children, who was born male, now identifies as a female and goes by the name Rebekah. On Nov. 1, Rebekah “had her second surgical procedure to place a hormone-blocking implant in her arm to prevent her from progressing farther into puberty.”
In her post, Bruesehoff described the procedure as “medically appropriate, medically necessary, life-affirming, and often literally life-saving treatment.” It’s still not clear, though, what kind of lasting effects (read: damage) this kind of hormonal treatment can have on a child.
Introducing puberty-blocking medications and therapies for the off-label purpose of treating gender dysphoria presents concerns regarding neurological development and bone growth. The experiment of giving gender dysphoric kids hormone blockers also calls into question how they should be treated medically, according to Dr. Rob Garofalo, director of gender and sex development at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. READ MORE
