What Next?

The Boston Globe has published an expose on a Massachusetts doctor who recently launched a sex change program for kids. The controversial "Gender Management" clinic, located at Children's Hospital Boston, aims to help young people delay puberty so that they can decide if they want to be a man or woman. With patients as young as 10, Dr. Norman Spack has been described as an "evangelist" for trans gender kids. In a "Q&A" session with the Globe, Dr. Spack says he administers powerful hormones to help kids "rewrite their future." When asked for the most difficult ethical issue he faces, Spack responds, "... You have to explain to the patients... [that] they may not be able to have children. When you're talking to a 12-year-old, that's a heavy duty conversation." But, he says, "if they don't [have the sex change therapy], they'll always have trouble fitting in." Most of us would agree that there's a lot more at stake here than "fitting in." Apart from the moral complications (which are too many to count), this is an adult decision. A 10-year-old child cannot possibly understand his sexual identity or comprehend the full meaning of sterility. But the hospital does. And it should know better than to lend space and credibility to a doctor who uses his radical agenda as an excuse to experiment on little children.

Source: FRC, Boston Globe