Rita Panahi: Australia’s gender agenda should cause shame

While the UK and much of the US are halting dangerous treatments and surgeries for under 18s, Australian clinics are blindly following the deeply flawed “gender affirming” model.

One of the greatest medical scandals of our time is unfolding in the Western world and yet in Australia doctors are carrying on delivering so-called “gender affirming care” to confused children and ignoring how these harmful practices have been exposed, and in some cases banned. Ideology has been allowed to override evidence as well as basic common sense.

This week UK health authorities announced a ban on puberty blockers for minors other than those prescribed as part of a clinical trial.

This major development comes as disturbing practices in the medical transitioning of children came to light with the release of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) files.

The notion of giving children powerful drugs including puberty blockers and setting them down the path of surgeries including double mastectomies, lifelong medical care and grave unintended consequences including loss of sexual function and infertility, is of course obscene but that is precisely what is happening in Australia.

When Senator Alex Antic tried to refer his Childhood Gender Transition Prohibition Bill to a Senate hearing, he was predictably blocked by the Greens and Labor. Picture: Monique Harmer

While the UK, Scandinavian countries and much of the US are putting a halt to dangerous, and often irreversible treatments and surgeries for under 18s, Australian gender clinics are blindly following the deeply flawed “gender affirming” model.

Australia has become an outlier, a country so terrified of finding out the truth that both federal and state governments have failed to commit to a review of practices in gender clinics including at The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

When Senator Alex Antic tried to refer his Childhood Gender Transition Prohibition Bill to a Senate hearing back in November, he was predictably blocked by the Greens and Labor who have wholeheartedly swallowed this poisonous ideology.

But it must also be noted that a small minority of gutless Coalition MPs failed to support Antic, including Simon Birmingham, Maria Kovacic, Dean Smith and Jane Hume.

We’ve seen much of the medical profession shamefully allow their “first, do no harm” oath to be corrupted by a radical, dangerous, anti-science ideology.

The trans lobby’s disproportionate power in medicine is being challenged, but they continue to flex their muscle in the media, academia, the arts and increasingly the corporate world.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist