The Federal Trade Commission issued a tentative agenda earlier this week for its upcoming July 9 workshop addressing the potential illegality of so-called gender transition procedures for minors under the Federal Trade Commission Act.
This seminar, titled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors,” will examine potentially misleading or harmful practices in “gender-affirming care” for minors and feature testimonies from physicians, medical ethicists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, and parents of detransitioners.
The experts will offer insights based on research, professional knowledge and their own lived experiences.
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The FTC, which is authorized under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to safeguard consumers from deceptive or unfair practices, claimed its authority could extend to the performance of gender transition procedures on minors if evidence shows that medical providers or others failed to disclose risks or made unverified claims about its benefits.
The seminar aims to help the FTC assess whether consumers have been subjected to misleading or unsubstantiated claims about “gender-affirming care” and to evaluate the potential harms consumers may face.
“Under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC is provided broad authority to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive trade acts and practices,” read an internal FTC memo from May.
“There is now considerable reason to believe that the doctors and medical providers pushing [gender-affirming care] on minors are knowingly deceiving parents by exaggerating [gender-affirming care’s] ‘benefits’ and downplaying its harmful side effects.”
Brandon Showalter, a Christian Post opinion writer and social commentator who hosts the “Generation Indoctrination” podcast, will be participating in the workshop. He is heartened to see the steps the Trump administration is taking to push back against transgender ideology’s harms against children.
“It is enormously encouraging to see federal agencies continue to take action to end the scourge of child sterilization and mutilation in keeping with President Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order,” said Showalter, who has reported extensively on the topic.
“Anyone who has spent any amount of time researching the practices of the gender-medical industry knows that fraud and deception abound,” he said.
“The Federal Trade Commission is to be commended for scrutinizing this medical scandal and the industries that prop it up and they are right to refer to so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ as ‘the Big Lie,’ because it is indeed impossible to be born in the wrong body, as trans activists routinely claim.”
The Jan. 28 executive order mentioned by Showalter declares that “It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
The order also directed the heads of executive branch agencies to “take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” and “rescind or amend all policies” that rely on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which encouraged the performance of gender transition procedures on minors.
Trump directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” using “regulatory and sub-regulatory actions,” “publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for the promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion” and “issue new guidance protecting whistleblowers” who report the performance of gender transition procedures on minors.
In-person attendance at the event in Washington, D.C., will be by invitation only to protect the safety of the participants, according to an FTC statement. The general public will be able to access the event via livestream.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
