UK High Court OKs ban on puberty blockers 

The High Court in Britain has ruled that a puberty blocker ban for minors enacted by the previous Conservative government can stay in place.

The decision came as a result of a legal challenge by a transgender group displeased with the decision of former British Health Secretary Victoria Atkins to enact the ban as a child safety measure, according to the BBC.

Justice Beverley Lang noted in the decision to keep the ban active that a study by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) found that the evidence for the use of transgender medical care for children was “remarkably weak” and that young people have been lured into questioning their gender by “stormy social discourse,” reported the Associated Press. 

The study cited by Lang, called the Cass Review, said that “research [into transgender medicine for children] isn’t good enough and we haven’t got good data. … The toxicity of the debate is perpetuated by adults, and that itself is unfair to the children who are caught in the middle of it. The children are being used as a football and this is a group that we should be showing more compassion to.”  

The Cass Review was published in April after a four-year landmark study.  

The review concluded that healthcare for gender dysphoric youth should consider “the young person holistically and not solely in terms of their gender-related distress.”  

“The central aim … should be to help young people to thrive and achieve their life goals,” it said.  

Best-selling author and women’s rights activist J.K. Rowling welcomed the High Court’s decision, saying it might be a turning point in keeping kids safe from the liberal ideology.  

“High Court rules the UK ban on puberty blockers is lawful. We seem, at last, to be moving back to treatment for vulnerable youth based on evidence-based medicine, as opposed to the unevidenced claims of ideological lobby groups,” said Rowling via X. 

Current U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting expressed satisfaction with the High Court’s decision on puberty blockers, noting that children’s healthcare must be treated more scientifically.  

“Children’s healthcare must be evidence-led. We must therefore act cautiously and with care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people,” Streeting said, according to the Associated Press.  

After the defeat of the conservative Tory government in the spring elections, the current liberal Labour government said it would continue to support the ban.  

Both major parties in Britain have drawn a harder line on transgender ideology and children than liberals have in the U.S. 

The U.K. Department of Education released a draft report in May that found that transgender ideology should also be kept out of schools, said the U.K.’s Evening Standard.  

Both parties also have “discouraged” the practice of transgender conversion before adulthood. 

The Cass Review concluded that further options should be available for those who wish to detransition. 

“There needs to be provision for people considering detransition, recognising that they may not wish to re-engage with the services whose care they were previously under,” said the report.