Family First Legislative Council candidates Deepa Mathew (SA), Lyle Shelton (NSW) and Jane Foreman (Victoria) say it is time Australian medical practitioners followed the lead of their US counterparts and stopped prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery to children in the name of so-called “gender-affirming care”.
The call follows a decisive move in the United States, where the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has formally disavowed gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions for minors, declaring the evidence base to be “low quality/low certainty” and finding there is “insufficient evidence demonstrating a favourable risk-benefit ratio” for these procedures in children and adolescents.
US health authorities have warned these interventions cause irreversible harm. As the ASPS position statement makes clear, “there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favourable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents.”
“Leading medical bodies in the United States are finally admitting what families have been saying for years — this medicine is experimental, unscientific and harmful to children,” the Family First candidates said.
“This is now a massive international medical scandal. Australian doctors and politicians can no longer plead ignorance. Their silence is making them complicit.”
Family First reiterated that it is party policy to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender surgery for minors, describing these interventions as a form of gender conversion therapy imposed on vulnerable children.
“If elected, Family First candidates will make protecting children from gender conversion therapy one of our top priorities,” the candidates said.
“Children deserve care that helps them grow up whole and healthy — not irreversible medical experiments driven by ideology rather than evidence.”
Contact details:
media@familyfirstparty.au
