NIH to study those who regret gender transitions

President Donald Trump’s administration wants to know more about those who have negative experiences with and regret transitioning.

The administration recently ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the mental and physical consequences of undergoing so-called gender-affirming care, NPR reports.

The directive, from acting NIH Director Mark Memoli, tells the agency to look at how “social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation” impacts children and to study “regret” and “detransition” among those who have identified as transgender.

“This is very important to the President and the Secretary,” the memo says, referring to Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “They would like us to have funding announcements within the next six months to get this moving.”

The memo gives NIH flexibility in creating the size and scope of the project, its funding mechanisms and how it will be conducted.

Evgenia Abbruzzese, co-founder of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, supports the initiative. She said much of the data on this issue is old and outdated.

“We are starting to see much greater numbers of young people who are seeing that they went down the wrong path for them and they’re now left with irreversible changes to their body and they no longer identify as transgender,” Abbruzzese told NPR. “But they are left with these permanent effects.

“There are a lot of negative impacts of transition. And regret is definitely one of them. It’s a very important area of medicine to study.” 

A Johns Hopkins public health assistant professor who supports transgenderism even admitted detransition and regret are areas worth studying. 

“I support rigorous, ethically grounded research into all aspects of transgender health, and that includes the experience of detransition,” Harry Barbee said. “However, it’s imperative that such research be framed in a way that neither pathologizes transition nor undermines the overwhelming evidence showing that gender-affirming care is beneficial and even life-saving for the vast majority of trans people who desire such services.” 

Another academic agreed it’s a topic worth covering without prefacing it with any liberal concerns. 

“The research on detransition is very useful, it’s a very important area,” said Michael Briggs, a University of Oxford associate sociology professor. “This is an understudied population to collect systematic data on.” 

Trump’s move comes as detransitioners have already expressed optimism about his second term. 

Many reacted fondly when Trump signed an executive order in January aimed at eliminating federal funding for so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. 

Claire Abernathy, who began transitioning at 12 and later regretted her double mastectomy, expressed relief upon hearing of the executive order. 

“It makes me emotional, to be honest, knowing that a group that has been so deeply harmed and ignored for so long is finally having our voices heard,” she told The Daily Signal. 

Prisha Mosely, who underwent a double mastectomy at 18 and later detransitioned, expressed a similar sentiment. 

“Relief was the feeling,” she told the Signal. “Like, excitement and joy and stuff came after, but it was relief. I don’t want my kids to grow up being told the things I was told by other people, and I don’t want to continue to go outside, especially to places like Pride and see young people who are using walkers for no reason, who have mastectomy scars when they were previously healthy.” 

Mosely also thinks doctors who pushed transgenderism on teens should face lawsuits. 

“Crimes against children have been committed … and I think accountability needs to come, and this is a step toward that,” she said.