At a time when many European countries are urging caution on the issue of gender transition, the French High Authority on Health (Haute Autorité de Santé, HAS) has issued an alarming report in favour of gender transitions from the age of 16, without parental consent—and at public expense. It all started in 2021 with a request from the French ministry of solidarity and health to the HAS, France’s highest authority for regulating medical practices, to give its opinion on best practices for health care professionals caring for people wishing to undergo a ‘gender transition.’
The HAS has now produced a report, currently under review, dealing with the steps that follow a request for transition. Such a request is generally addressed by three types of response: prescription of ‘gender-affirming’ hormones, ‘gender reassignment’ surgery (e.g., changing the appearance of the sex organs), and ‘support’ for transgender people.
The HAS’s exceptionally serious recommendations are aimed at creating a “public service for gender transition,” in the words of Le Figaro journalist Paul Sugy, the source of the revelations: full reimbursement; launch of the transition with no obligation to undergo a psychological assessment; and, most seriously, removal of parental authority in the event of parentals refusing the transition requests of minor children.
Right from the start of the ‘transition journey’, the HAS recommends setting up “a welcoming environment that is caring and adapted to trans people,” in particular by using the pronouns and first names requested by the person concerned. The HAS therefore recommends that healthcare staff be trained in this area. This request should lead to an interview aimed at gaining a better understanding of the person’s history and needs—but never at assessing their decision-making capacity, which would be considered a judgement.
Regarding the prescription of hormones, the HAS recommends “securing access to gender-affirming hormones,” “reimbursing the cost” of supplying them, and making it possible for all doctors, not just endocrinologists, to prescribe them. There is no precautionary principle here.
With regard to the surgery stage, the report recommends that it be carried out “without delay” after the patient makes a request, thereby preventing any delay in maturation, which amounts to guaranteeing in practice that no change of heart will be possible. In addition to basic operations on the genitals, the HAS proposes a whole catalogue of “cares” and “treatments” to be made available to trans people, such as “depilation.”
These recommendations clearly go beyond the High Authority’s field of expertise and give the impression of having been dictated by militant transgender associations anxious to advance their agenda. Unsurprisingly, Le Figaro reveals that the HAS entrusted the drafting of this report to a committee of experts made up almost exclusively of activists from trans-activist associations, or health professionals who have publicly supported the demands of these associations, or even trans people themselves. This is not a detailed and measured report, but a document of combat, drawn up in good conscience by activists who want to obtain new ‘rights,’ even by shamelessly disguising reality, testimonies, or studies that would contradict their narrative. As Sugy notes, revealingly: the word “caution” is used only once in the entire report.
The backdrop to this is the paradox highlighted several times by essayists Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern in their hard-hitting essay Transmania: if trans-identity should no longer be considered a ‘pathology’, why should the care associated with it be covered by social security, and therefore by the taxpayer, in the same way as other diseases—real ones this time?
At the same time, in other European countries such as the UK and Sweden, governments are changing course tentatively, recognising the suffering caused by transitional ‘treatment’ imposed on fragile people at too young an age—with irreversible physical and psychological after-effects.
