This month, a Norwegian independent government agency declared that Norway’s current standards of so-called “gender-affirming” care need to change. The report, published by the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (UKOM), found that using puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in youth lacks scientific basis and carries high risk. The board called for any future standards of treatment to be based on a systematic review of existing research as well as a multidisciplinary approach. 

UKOM’s findings are important for three reasons. First, Norway has now joined the growing list of European countries that are pumping the brakes on harmful treatments for gender dysphoria. Second, these findings only further confirm what we should now know: that chemical and surgical “gender-affirming” interventions are experimental and not evidence-based. Third, and above all, what has happened in Norway should make us commit here and again to protect children’s God-given bodies and to purge medicine of destructive gender ideology.