WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) sent a letter to the Governor of Utah, Governor Spencer Cox, the Director of the Utah Division of Professional Licensing, Mark Steinagel, the President of the Utah Senate, President J. Stuart Adams, and the Utah Speaker of the House, then-Speaker Brad Wilson, demanding action be immediately taken to stop the inhumane “gender treatments” occurring at the University of Utah’s Gender Management and Support Clinic.
Via a public records request, AFL recently obtained consent forms that reveal the Clinic is administering disturbing “transgender treatments” to minors despite numerous clear and unresearched risks. For example, the “risk of feminizing therapy options” are extensive – including “high blood pressure, blood clots, heart disease, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, non-cancerous tumors of the pituitary gland, gall stones, breast cancer, headaches and migraines, and loss of fertility.” The consent form requires minors to acknowledge disturbing changes to the body, including potential permanent shrinkages of testicles and sperm being “immature” and leading to an inability to cause a pregnancy – i.e., infertility.
The consent form requires the minor–who under Utah law does not even have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract–to acknowledge that blood clots alone, just one risk of taking estrogen, may cause chronic problems with veins in the legs, heart attacks, irreversible chest growth, pulmonary embolisms “which may cause permanent lung damage or death,” and strokes “which may cause permanent brain damage or death.”
In addition to these known risks, the Clinic acknowledges that the “[u]se of estrogen for gender-affirming hormone therapy is not FDA approved [and] there may be long-term risks that are currently unknown.” Despite all these dangerous consequences of biological males using estrogen, the clinic only requires a “letter of support from a mental health professional.”
Children do not have the capacity to understand the risks of these major procedures, which include sterilization and death; in many cases, the risks are entirely unstudied and unknown. As a public official with special responsibility for ensuring that the people of Utah receive legitimate treatment that helps them get better, and not worse, AFL President Stephen Miller has called on Governor Cox, Director Steinagel, Senate President J. Stuart Adams and then-Speaker Brad Wilson, to take action to stop this dangerous activity.
Read the letter to the Governor here, the state legislature here, and the Division of Professional Licensing here.
Photo credit: Roman/Adobe Stock Images
