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March 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – With spiking rates of transgender children already reported in the United States and the United Kingdom, the CBC, Canada’s state broadcaster, recently noted a sharp rise in children requesting gender “transition” in Canada as well. Children’s clinics, the CBC reported, are seeing “exponential growth in demand for treatment from teens who don’t identify as the sex they were born with.”

Despite the fact that this spike is unprecedented, physicians like Dr. Stephen Feder don’t seem to be too concerned about why it is occurring. Feder serves as the co-director of the “gender diversity clinic” at CHEO, an Ottawa children’s hospital, and he noted that ten years ago the hospital would have seen one or two children per year who “wanted to change their gender or had questions about their gender identity.” In 2018, that number went up to 180.

“This is a serious process that these kids are struggling with, and we have an opportunity to help them,” Feder told the CBC. “The reality is that young people who are struggling with not being able to express themselves in their authentic way really suffer – they suffer a lot. The implications of somebody not being able to be themselves is very, very stark and frightening.” As a result, Feder’s clinic ensures that children “are seen by a team of doctors who treat them with hormone blockers, hormone therapy and, in some cases, surgery to transition from one gender to another.”

It is important to note here that there has been no research in the past decade that indicates that gender “reassignment” surgeries actually help those struggling with gender confusion. The University of Birmingham analyzed 100 studies done on people who had undergone sex change surgeries and found “no conclusive evidence” that the surgeries have any psychological benefits. One of the only existing long-term studies was done by the University Hospital and University of Bern in Switzerland, which looked at the quality of life of recipients of sex change surgeries. The study found that almost universally, sex change recipients reported a lower quality of life as well as many negative physical side effects.

In fact, a Swedish study in 2011 found that those who undergo sex reassignment surgery actually have a “considerably higher risk for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity,” indicating that Dr. Stephen Feder’s opinion that transgender children are in desperate need of getting gender reassignment work done at his clinic does not align with much of the available evidence. And business these days is good: Feder said that although he thinks children referred to his clinic should be seen by a doctor within two to four weeks, “the surge in demand is making that difficult.”

This surge, reports the CBC, is taking place at clinics right across Canada. The British Columbia Children’s Hospital had 20 referrals in 2013, and 240 in 2018. Toronto’s SickKids saw 100 children in 2013, and that number has now doubled to 200. The vast majority of these children are females wishing to transition to male – at the CHEO, 75 percent of them are girls who wish to become boys. The clinic starts by putting them on hormone blockers to stop puberty, which they claim gives the children time to decide if they wish to proceed on to more permanent surgeries like mastectomies and the mutilation of the genitals.

As for the reason behind the spiking rates of transgender children, Dr. Margaret Lawson, who is an endocrinologist at the same clinic, says there “is no explanation for the growth.” (Dr. Lisa Littman reported that “rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which largely occurs in girls, has become a social contagion” – she was immediately attacked and demonized by trans activists as a result of her research.) There is no mention of the relentless indoctrination and promotion of transgenderism taking place, the wildly popular transgender YouTube stars, the children’s books, or of the fact that scientifically speaking, a girl cannot become a boy and vice versa.

There is also no discussion of the side effects of sex change surgery, a phrase that was changed to “gender reassignment surgery,” which has now been switched to “gender confirmation surgery” to assure us all that castrating kids and giving mastectomies to physically healthy teen girls is perfectly normal – even though we have no explanation for why their numbers are growing exponentially, we don’t know how this is going to turn out, and all long-term studies indicate that none of this is going to end well.

We are performing an experiment on children on a massive scale, and we are doing permanent damage to these children. Despite the gaslighting trans activists engage in by insisting that therapy to help children feel comfortable in their own bodies is “conversion therapy” and actually converting their bodies is not, it is their ideology that is devastating the lives of thousands.

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.