The international backlash over gender transition procedures for minors has reached South America. Last Tuesday, Chilean Health Minister Ximena Aguilera ordered the nation’s public health system not to provide puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to any new patients. On Wednesday, the nation’s largest private health network, UC Christus at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, also suspended hormonal treatments for minors.
Up to this point, Chile’s progressive government had adopted the deceptively titled “gender-affirming care” model, which pressures young people into a lifetime of medical dependence as they battle their own biology. They treat children as young as three and refer 15- and 16-year-olds for double mastectomies.
Under the leadership of President Gabriel Boric, the Chilean government introduced a “trans-affirmative support program” called “Grow with Pride” that urges children as young as three-years-old to question and reject their biological sex. In 2023, 1,202 children received trans support under the program (a number including both social and medical transition), with an estimated 2,940 more this year, according to a lengthy report by popular Chilean news site, BíoBíoChile.
Sadly, the BíoBío report detailed negative effects of gender ideology similar to those seen in the U.S. There were cases of rapid-onset gender dysphoria, psychiatric comorbidities, and desistance. Yet the government mandated “gender-affirming” treatments, promoted social transition without parental approval, ignored the lack of evidence, and targeted “non-affirming” parents.
Then, in April, Dame Hilary Cass released her comprehensive, scathing report that demolished governmental support in the U.K. for minor gender transitions. Cass found “weak” or “no evidence” for transgender ideology, and “no evidence” that transgender interventions reduce suicide. But she found abundant evidence that transgender centers shun accountability, that trans-identifying minors usually suffer from complex mental illnesses and childhood trauma, and that toxic rhetoric and transgender ideology harm children.
The Cass report has now jumped across oceans, hemispheres, and language barriers to trigger warning alarms in distant Santiago, Chile. BíoBío declared the report had triggered “an earthquake” — a weighty analogy for a volcanic republic on the Pacific Rim.
The 13,500-word BíoBío report in late May generated other criticism in the Chilean press, leading conservative opposition figures to dig deeper and press the progressive government for details on the “Grow with Pride” program. The unwelcome attention prompted Aguilera to “very discreetly” freeze the program last week. A Chilean parents’ group, Kairós, and a detransitioner group, Detrans Chile, also criticized the program. (Yes, with a population of 19 million, less than 6% of America’s, Chile has groups of both concerned parents and detransitioners, because transgender ideology’s rejection of biology will trigger the same reaction everywhere.)
BíoBío also revealed a “tremendous double standard” at UC Christus. The private Catholic hospital network is “well known for opposing abortion, vasectomies and other procedures that could go against Christian values,” according to Kairos. It had refused to perform a vasectomy on a 40-year-old father, based on its policy “not to alter the natural course of life, not to artificially induce something that alters reproduction.”
That same man had a son named Andrés, UC Christus approved for gender transition procedures at the age of 15. Hospital staff prescribed the boy puberty blockers and advised him to freeze his sperm to preserve fertility, thus altering the natural course of life and artificially inducing something that altered reproduction. That’s a double standard as clear as the male and female free-throw lines.
Fortunately, this story has a good ending. Andrés’s family took him to a therapist who correctly diagnosed and treated his underlying depression. The family combined therapy and social medication with strong family bonding time, taking down all social media networks, and — after the end of pandemic-dictate-related social isolation — allowing Andrés to go out with friends. Eventually, he came to see that his gender dysphoria was simply “a form of denying oneself.” The now-18-year-old Andrés has come to like being a boy and is no longer same-sex-attracted.
It’s also good news that UC Cristus suspended gender transition procedures for minors. In their decision, UC Cristus cited both the April 12 Cass report and an April 8 statement from the Vatican which denounced “gender theory” and “any sex-change intervention” on the grounds of human dignity. However, neither science nor morality deterred this private hospital system from pursuing these dangerous but lucrative treatments — until mounting public pressure shamed the Chilean government to backpedal first.
Chile demonstrates the impact a relatively small number of people can have if they “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). By simply shining a light on the exploitative nature of gender transitions for minors, a couple of interest groups, media reports, and courageous politicians prompted the whole country — both the government and big business — to reverse course, for the good of the nation’s children and youth.
Meanwhile, transgender ideology’s foundationless stranglehold on medicine continues to crumble, as yet another nation — demographically unlike the western and northern European trailblazers — has turned its back on providing gender transition procedures to minors.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
