The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a finalized 410-page report with a significant finding: so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is built on “very low-quality evidence” and “contains an extensive description of potential or plausible harms associated with certain treatment options (namely, hormonal interventions and surgeries).” As Family Research Council’s guest host Jody Hice said on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” this deals “a major blow to the pervasive lies that are being promoted by the radical Left on so-called gender transition procedures” — practices being “sold as cure-alls for children who are struggling with gender dysphoria.”

To provide further insight into the findings, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, senior research fellow at FRC and director of American Values at the America First Policy Institute, offered her analysis of the news, expressing appreciation for the initiatives undertaken by the Trump administration’s HHS and noting that addressing this issue involves presenting scientific data in a complex environment. Dr. Bauwens acknowledged that there is considerable opposition to these efforts, which can create challenging conditions for those working in this area.

In the end, it’s “great news” that those at the HHS “are willing to be put on the record and share what the findings are.” And yet, she continued, “the findings … are not that new to those of us who’ve been working in this space for some time.” Rather, as Bauwens explained, this recent report reveals what health services in other countries have already shown, “which is the evidence to support gender affirming care is … very low quality, indeed.” It also showed that “the proclaimed outcomes that that gender affirming care has promised, such as good psychological health … good quality of life, or even long-term health have not proved to be the case with gender affirming care.” Here, “we have yet another review that shows that the research just isn’t there,” and that the research that has been done largely “doesn’t support this intervention.”

“It’s really good news,” Hice reiterated. “This is a bombshell report.” As for the growing volume of research against the trans ideology, Hice asked, “What are some of the reasons … that would cause a minor individual to take on a transgender identity?” As Bauwens explained, the question is less about why someone would pursue so-called “gender-affirming care” as it is about what treatment they really need instead — but aren’t getting. As she put it, “We have to remember … that this report is just looking at what shouldn’t be done. It’s not looking at some of the things that need to be addressed in these minors, such as the psychiatric issues that drove them to want to take on this trans identity in the first place.”

“Certainly,” she added, “we’ve seen from a number of studies that [many] people who identify as transgender … have traumatic backgrounds. Some have received information about the trans experience and felt that it explained why they have not fit in in the world, which is … a developmental challenge that we all work through.” In short, there’s a “whole host of issues that should be addressed.” And yet, many of them “haven’t been addressed because of the stranglehold that some of these medical organizations, including organizations that I would be associated with in the psychological profession, that … really put a clamp down on any kind of ingenuity that would take place on actually addressing the real issues that children have with this kind of identity distress.”

Hice acknowledged that “it’s concerning that some of those organizations, like the American Psychiatric Association, for example, continue to push this stuff even when the sciences you’re unfolding for us is simply not there.” He also highlighted how there are some organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and others, that refused to participate in the peer review study. But as Bauwens put it, “that’s the beautiful thing about this report, is that it gave people on both sides of the issue an opportunity to respond.”

Bauwens underscored the importance “for the American people to understand that there was ample opportunity to address the concerns. And that’s actually how science works, right? Good science says, ‘Let’s debate this. Let’s look at the evidence and see where it leads us.’” If findings support a practice, she explained, it can be adopted and tested further. “[I]t doesn’t mean that that’s the end of the scientific inquiry. It just means that … for this time period, this is where the evidence is leading us.” It’s “very telling,” Bauwens stressed, when some of “these particular professional groups” abandon this approach to research.

She concluded: “[W]e’re talking about vulnerable minors who are being subject to lifelong changes through these interventions.” Children who get surgery in the name of gender-affirming care “will never have those body parts back again. And so, the … evidence [against the practice starts] to rise to a new level, and to think that these organizations are backing away from the opportunity to defend their positions is frightening. And it’s telling.”