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Children's Hospital Boston Offers "Sex Change" to Adolescents

"They'll probably be infertile" says "sex change" doctor

By Michael Baggot

BOSTON, MA, April 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Endocrinologist Norman Spack of the Children's Hospital Boston (CHB) is continuing to promote the Gender Management Service Clinic, whose services include giving "transgendered" children puberty-delaying drugs so that they can choose the gender of their body.

"Unique in the Western hemisphere, the clinic will also care for children and young adults who present as transgendered - those who have no known anatomic or biochemical disorder, yet feel like a member of the opposite sex," stated the Pediatric Views, a publication of the CHB.

"The puberty-blocking drugs work best at the beginning of the pubital process, typically age 10 to 12 for a girl and 12 to 14 for a boy," Spack explained to the Boston Globe.

Delaying puberty makes it easier to undergo "transgender" surgery.

"It's important to point out that simply because one undergoes mutilating surgery and decides to administer to themselves the hormone of the opposite gender, doesn't actually make you that gender.  It is surgery but it doesn't actually turn a girl into a boy.  The chromosomal differences remain," Ari Taube of MassResistance.com observed.

Spack admits that the puberty-delaying procedure will likely leave the patient infertile.

"When young people halt their puberty before their bodies have developed, and then take cross-hormones for a few years, they'll probably be infertile. You have to explain to the patients that if they go ahead, they may not be able to have children," added Spack.

"When you're talking to a 12-year-old, that's a heavy-duty conversation.  Does a kid that age really think about fertility?"

LifeSiteNews.com previously reported that Spack has stated that only 20 percent of "transgendered" children continue to experience gender confusion into adulthood.

Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, contends that "sex change" surgeries hurt rather than heal those struggling with their sexual identity.

"We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia," McHugh wrote of "transgendered" patients in his 2004 First Things article 'Surgical Sex.'

"I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment.  The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes.  Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions-second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons."

"As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their 'true' sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex.  We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it," added McHugh.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Boston Children's Hospital Opens "Transgender" Children's Clinic
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07051806.html

Boy, 12, Given Questionable Sex-Change Therapy after "Diagnosed" as Transsexual
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07012902.html

Read Dr. McHugh's Surgical Sex in First Things:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=398&v...

To contact Children's Hospital Boston:
300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 USA
617-355-6000
617-355-0443 (TTY)
http://www.childrenshospital.org/about/email.cfm?s=1394&c=7&u=webteam

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