The New Zealand government has halted the prescription of puberty blockers for minors who claim to be the sex they are not, citing a lack of evidence about their benefits and risks.
Health Minister Simeon Brown said on Wednesday the move would only apply to new patients with “gender dysphoria or incongruence”, was aligned with the United Kingdom’s approach, and would be dependent on an ongoing British clinical trial on the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues.
The Ministry of Health said it found a “a lack of high-quality evidence that demonstrates the benefits or risks of the use” of puberty blockers, which were banned in the UK, have irreversible effects and can cause sterilisation, after the Cass Review found insufficient evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness.
The ban comes into effect on December 19, and Mr Brown said it will not affect patients with conditions such as early-onset puberty, endometriosis, or prostate cancer, where there is “strong clinical evidence of benefit”.
“We are putting in place stronger safeguards so families can have confidence that any treatment is clinically sound and in the best interests of the young person or child,” he said.
The new safeguards were welcomed by the New Zealand First party, which responded by saying “sanity won another battle in the war on woke”.
“After years of dangerous ideological experimentation pushed by radical activists and rubber-stamped by weak politicians, the New Zealand Government has officially banned puberty blockers for children,” MP Casey Costello said in a statement.
“It’s a monumental victory for common sense and for every parent who’s been told to sit down, shut up, and let so-called ‘experts’ chemically sterilise their kids because they were ‘born in the wrong body’. No one is born in the wrong body.”
The ban comes after Queensland’s Health Minister reinstated a ban on puberty blockers and hormones after far-left extremist activists overturned the state’s pause – brought in after a rogue gender clinic was caught prescribing the drugs to children as young as 12 – in the Supreme Court on a technicality.
In April the Adelaide Women and Children’s Hospital admitted approving “gender-affirming treatment”, including puberty blockers, for 22 children, one aged just 11, without the legally required psychiatrist assessments.
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