by James C. Sherlock
To get this out of the way, I personally support qualified diagnosis and psychological treatment for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.
I oppose puberty suppression, cross-gender hormonal treatments and transgender surgical procedures in minors.
That said, transgender individuals, like everyone, deserve skilled, safe and standards-based medical care.
Virginia laws and regulations protect people from all sorts of things, but somehow they do not protect transgender persons from bad medical treatment. It seems axiomatic to regulate transgender medical practice to the most up-to-date and widely accepted professional standards.
But that is not the case in Virginia. It is not that the standards are out of date; they apparently do not exist.
I searched the regulations of the Department of Health for the term “transgender” and it came up “no results found.” But VDH protects us from bad shellfish.
The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Health has lots of regulations, but a search for the term “dysphoria” comes up empty. Continue reading