Tax dollars from citizens of Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin are funneling into state university health programs that openly provide unproven hormonal injections shown to be exceptionally risky—including possible side effects of infertility, cancer, and death.
Indiana University’s Student Health Center, the University Health Services for University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Illinois’ McKinley Center all provide hormonal injections for students and other services they claim are “gender-affirming care” without parental notification and often with great medical risk.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s “Informed Consent” form for receiving “feminizing hormones” contains several contradictions.
In the introduction, the form describes hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, as an “important component of transition” that “can greatly improve quality of life, psychological well-being, and affirm identity.” The form goes on to describe increased chances for migraines, decreased bone density, diabetes, infertility, cancer, and death.
A 2018 study of 5,000 individuals suffering from gender dysphoria and taking hormonal treatments showed a higher risk for blood clots, stroke, and heart attacks.
A 2022 study by Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, indicates increased suicide rates when minors undergo gender-targeted hormonal treatments. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
The University of Wisconsin notes this research by adding: “We know HRT is life-affirming care, but some side effects from hormones are irreversible and could cause death in rare circumstances.”
On the same form, Wisconsin admits that the long-term effects of hormone replacement therapy are unknown.
Indiana University’s health center suggests that students requesting hormones should undergo psychological and physical examinations before being prescribed hormone therapy, but explicitly states that IU won’t withhold hormones if the student declines these exams.
The University of Illinois’ health center suggests that students explore their existing insurance policies to obtain hormonal treatment at off-campus pharmacies—after which students would self-administer hormone injections. The center also advises students to visit Planned Parenthood and other providers that “routinely prescribe [hormonal treatments].”
Additionally, the University of Illinois health center advises students to sign up with the manufacturer of a hormonal treatment for a voucher program to reduce the cost. No psychological evaluation is required to obtain the voucher.
All three university medical centers specifically state that they follow guidelines for “gender-affirming care” provided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH.
The transgender health association suggests, in documents linked by Indiana University, that children as young as 2 years old begin showing gender dysphoria, and claims that children as young as 9 should be considered for hormone injections.
Although the association suggests parental or guardian consent is needed until “the adolescent has reached the age of medical consent,”it doesn’t establish what that age is.
It claims in the same document that “no increased risk” of cancer results from using hormonal treatments, or that results are “inconclusive.”
Curiously, the transgender health association admits: “To date, no controlled clinical trials of any feminizing/masculinizing hormone regimen have been conducted to evaluate safety or efficacy in producing physical transition.”
No significant study suggests that a student’s quality of life is improved by the immense physical trauma of manipulating the human body’s endocrine and reproductive systems via hormonal injections. Several studies in the U.K. have found hormonal treatments to be harmful, propped up by “low-quality evidence” by advocates.
The fact that university staff dispense unproven, harmful, and potentially deadly injections for students to self-administer is medically concerning, but additional issues arise since these are public university programs funded by taxpayers.
Neither Indiana University’s Student Health Center, the University Health Services for University of Wisconsin-Madison, or the University of Illinois’ McKinley Center responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
President Joe Biden defended surgery and hormonal treatments for “transgender children” in a Dec. 13 address on the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, saying: “We need to challenge the hundreds of callous, cynical laws introduced in the states targeting transgender children, terrifying families and criminalizing doctors who give children the care they need.”
Some universities have halted these harmful transgender interventions after pressure from state legislatures.
The Vanderbilt Pediatric Gender Clinic “paused” all gender procedures on minors after a formal request from Republican members of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Vanderbilt promised a decision on future actions would be made following a “review” lasting several months.
As transgressive surgeries and treatments became a fad in only the last decade, no state or federal laws protect taxpayers from funding such projects.
Progressives might claim that the average American “shouldn’t care” because transgender treatments on minors “don’t have anything to do with [them],” but many of those average Americans are funding these procedures automatically—whether they like it or not.
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