“This is a case involving children,” Skrmetti said. “This is a law that differentiates based on age. And if you look at the evidence, it shows that most kids who have gender identity issues outgrow them.”

Bailey told Fox News Digital in a statement that it was “imperative” for the Supreme Court to know “what is happening to America’s children on the ground in these clinics.”

“Radical activists lie to parents and prey on vulnerable children. When a credible whistleblower comes forward and swears under oath that children are being experimented on without parents’ knowledge, I take that seriously. seriously,” Bailey said.

The 18-page brief, which was filed with the Supreme Court last week, includes sworn testimony from a Missouri whistleblower — identified as Jamie Reed — claiming transgender medical centers pressured parents to “consent” to such transgender treatments “by falsely telling parents their children will commit suicide if they do not receive interventions,” the document states.

MORE THAN 5,700 CHILDREN OVER A 5-YEAR PERIOD HAVE UNDERGOED SUCH SURGERY, MOSTLY FROM 5 LIBERAL STATES: WATCHDOG

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, pictured here, signed Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s amicus brief. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“There is every reason to believe that these issues affect more than just Missouri’s largest transgender center,” the statement said. “The whistleblower testified that she was aware of similar problems at other clinics; The New York Times and other news reports corroborated these problems occurring at other clinics.”

In her affidavit, Reed, a former employee of the University of Washington’s infectious diseases division and a self-identified leftist, recounted: “Center doctors routinely pressured parents to ‘consent’ by pushing these parents, threatening them and intimidating them”, even declaring: parents: “You can have a living son or a dead daughter”, in front of their children. Reed first went public with his experience last year.

Reed also alleges that the center continued medical interventions even after the parents revoked their consent. She describes a scenario in which an outside ethicist expressed shock at the center’s practices during a consultation.

The affidavit also claims that the actual suicide rate among transgender youth is low, citing an analysis of more than 15,000 patient records from a leading gender clinic that identified a maximum suicide rate of 0.03 %, with no significant change in suicide rates before and after medical interventions. . Despite this data, Reed says parents were misled about the risks of refusing treatment.

ABUSIVE: A GROUP OF PEDIATRICISTS’ SUPPORT FOR TRANS THERAPIES RENOWNED BY THE STATE AGS

Young people protest for transgender surgeries for children. (Getty Images)

Reed’s affidavit says the center advertised comprehensive mental health evaluations, but in practice she was rarely allowed to schedule patients for those evaluations because of the center’s strict limitations. When mental health sessions did occur, they were often limited to only one to two hours before gender transition interventions began. This approach would have led to medical interventions for minors with unmanaged comorbidities, including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and eating disorders.

Reed also alleges that the center’s clinicians misled the Missouri Legislature by denying that minors underwent gender transition surgeries, despite evidence that the center referred minors for such procedures. The University of Washington has since admitted to performing surgeries on minors before the new state laws took effect, pointing to ongoing referrals despite policy changes against them, the brief says.

The center also failed to collect custody agreements from patients, leading to non-guardian adults bringing children in for treatment without parental consent.

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“As a result of this policy, children would present to the clinic with non-guardian adults after the guardian adults withheld consent,” the brief states.

Transgender treatments for children have become a hot topic as the 2024 general election is just weeks away. As more states have banned the practice, other liberal states have passed laws protecting medical providers from criminal prosecution by more restrictive states. Last week, medical advocacy group Do No Harm conservatively identified 5,747 minor patients who underwent sex reassignment surgery, and 13,994 received some sort of sex reassignment treatment between 2019 and 2023 across the country.