At just 16 years old, Fox Varian underwent surgical “gender-affirming care” and received a double mastectomy. Soon after, she regretted the hastily scheduled, irreversible surgery and her attempt to transition. She sued the physicians who “treated” her and is now the first detransitioner in America to win a malpractice lawsuit for being irreversibly mutilated as a minor.
The same week Varian won her case, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) bucked the so-called “medical consensus” and became the first major medical organization to recommend against gender transition surgeries before age 19. The American Medical Association (AMA) quietly followed, voicing agreement in a statement requested by the media. Despite this shifting landscape, the nation’s premier pediatric society, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), said it will not amend its stance.
One need not look far to see the force behind the AAP’s position. In August 2025, at the AAP Annual Leadership Conference, “recognizing transgender patients and providing gender-affirming care” was voted the number one resolution “of utmost importance to members.” This came just seven months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the United States will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” medical procedures or treatments intended to change a child’s sex, including surgical and chemical interventions for individuals under 19. Yet in fiscal year 2025 alone, the Department of Health and Human Services still awarded more than $19 million in federal grants to the AAP.
While ASPS and the AMA were retreating from their prior support of so-called gender-affirming care, the AAP released a video aimed at combating “disinformation on gender-affirming care” to “protect transgender and gender-expansive youth.” In another video from the AAP adolescent health care campaign toolkit, a young woman tells her physician she believes she is a “gender queer demi boy,” but “not 100% male” and wishes to go by “Alex.” She expresses concern about telling her parents. The doctor assures her he does not need to inform them and even recommends finding “support” outside her family.
The AAP, an organization ostensibly charged with protecting young people, should lead the call for caution around these irreversible interventions. Instead, it appears opposed not only to mounting evidence, but also to peers now changing course.
Medical organizations have long misled parents and children about the risks associated with “gender-affirming care.” Families are told these interventions are medically safe for minors, including social transitions, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, even though children are not yet considered mature enough to vote, drive, or drink alcohol.
These same institutions have dismissed or smeared good-faith efforts to examine the risks, attacking research that documents negative outcomes and long-term consequences.
Defending gender ideology has also proven lucrative. Since 2019, more than $119 million has been collected for sex-change treatments on minors, including 5,747 surgeries and nearly 63,000 prescriptions for hormones and puberty blockers.
Under pressure from the administration and amid a growing number of accounts from adults who regret their childhood transitions, ASPS and the AMA are finally signaling retreat. What, then, will it take for the American Academy of Pediatrics to reconsider?
How many more malpractice verdicts? How many more detransitioners are willing to speak about irreversible harm? How much more evidence of risk and long-term consequence must accumulate before caution replaces certainty?
The AAP wields enormous influence over physicians, hospitals, schools, and families. With that influence comes responsibility. When medical guidance shapes life-altering decisions for minors, they have ethical obligations to humility, transparency, and rigorous debate. If the organization refuses reassessment, why should taxpayers continue funding an institution unwilling to critically evaluate the outcomes of the treatments it so strongly endorses? We shouldn’t.
Children deserve medicine guided first by evidence, prudence, and long-term welfare, not ideology or institutional defensiveness.
Alleigh Marré is the Executive Director of American Parents Coalition and a mother of four.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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