Core claim in LGBT narrative around 'gender-affirming care' busted in new Finnish study

Activists and profit-incentivized health professionals have long told parents with supposedly gender-dysphoric children that they have a choice between a "dead son or a live daughter" or between a "living son or a dead daughter." In other words, many parents have been presented with the choice of either subjecting their mentally compromised child to irreversible and sterilizing sex-change medical interventions or running the risk of their child committing suicide.

A new peer-reviewed study in the esteemed quarterly journal BMJ Mental Health has put a nail in the coffin of this deceitful proposition.

Finnish researchers wanted to figure out whether adolescents and young adults with "clinically significant" gender dysphoria were less likely to kill themselves if provided so-called "gender affirming" care.

After analyzing all-cause and suicide deaths among a study population of 2,083 of "gender-referred adolescents" and 16,643 of matched controls, the researchers concluded that "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk."

"All-cause and suicide mortalities did not differ between those gender referred who had and had not proceeded to [sex change surgeries] when psychiatric treatment history was accounted for," wrote the researchers.

The researchers noted in their study that gender dysphoria, the mistaken sense that a person's so-called "gender identity" does not align with the person's sex, "is often accompanied by a desire to obtain hormonal and surgical treatment."

The number of youths referred to clinics in hopes of satisfying that desire has skyrocketed along with gender-dysphoria diagnoses in recent years. This trend is unsurprising, given the popular mantras pushed nowadays by activist groups such as the ACLU and the Trevor Project along with fellow travelers in academia, government, and the health profession — asserting that sex-change operations on this overwhelmingly mentally ill group improve mental outcomes and save lives.

In light of the increasing tendency to put kids under the knife and recognizing that "the all-cause mortality of gender-referred adolescents compared with matched controls has not been studied and [medical gender reassignment] in all-cause mortality is unknown," the scientists sought to figure whether genital mutilation and hormone therapy were indeed saving lives.

"There were 55 deaths in the study population, including 20 suicides," said the study. "In bivariate analyses, all-cause mortality did not statistically significantly differ between gender-referred individuals and controls; however, the proportion of suicides was higher in the gender-referred group (0.3% vs 0.1%; p=0.004)."

The study highlighted that psychiatric treatment was more common and frequent amongst the "gender-referred" cohort and that nearly 40% of the subjects in this group ultimately underwent sex-change surgeries.

"The all-cause mortality rate among gender-referred individuals was 0.81 per 1000 person-years, while controls had a rate of 0.40 per 1000 person-years. The suicide mortality rate among gender-referred individuals was 0.51 per 1000 person-years, while controls had a rate of 0.12 per 1000 person-years," said the study.

Despite the apparent deltas between the death rates on first inspection, multivariate analyses revealed "the all-cause mortality of gender-referred individuals did not differ from that of controls when registered sex and year of birth were accounted for or when psychiatric treatment contacts were added to the model."

Those who died apparently tended to be males who frequently underwent psychiatric treatment.

Extra to casting significant doubt on the claim that sex changes saves lives, the study also suggested that sex changes "have also not been shown to reduce even suicidal ideation, and suicidal ideation is not equal to actual suicide risk."

Worse yet for the LGBT activists' case, the study notes that a 2011 peer-reviewed study in PLOS One actually revealed that "even when psychiatric morbidity was controlled for, participants diagnosed as transsexual in adulthood who had undergone both hormonal and surgical [sex-change surgeries] displayed increased suicide mortality compared with matched population controls."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!