The United Kingdom on Wednesday indefinitely banned new prescriptions of puberty blockers to treat minors for gender dysphoria. The announcement comes a week after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving state bans on puberty-suppressing medication and other forms of transition-related care for minors.
Puberty blockers are commonly prescribed to transgender children in countries throughout the Western world to delay the onset of puberty or pause it as it is transpiring. The medication is prescribed with the goal of giving children who are experiencing gender dysphoria more time to decide if they want to take more permanent steps to transition genders. Puberty resumes when the medication is no longer taken.
The indefinite ban on the medication in Britain comes several months after an independent study commissioned by England’s National Health Service concluded that the medical evidence around transition-related care for minors is “remarkably weak” and that more research is needed.
“Children’s healthcare must always be evidence-led,” British Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said in a press release. “The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”
Dr. Hilary Cass, the author of the independent study, known as the “Cass report,” said she supported the ban, according to the same release.
“Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks, and that is why I recommended that they should only be prescribed following a multi-disciplinary assessment and within a research protocol,” she said.
Transgender activists around the world condemned the ban.
“I wouldn’t wish medical negligence on my worst enemy. Labour activists just wished it on my entire community,” Iris Duane, a former candidate for Britain’s Parliament, wrote on X. “To friends, family and community, many of us will survive, and we will remind them that hell is calling.”
Trans minors in the U.K. who are already taking the medication can continue doing so, according to the government, and cisgender minors who experience puberty at an abnormally early age will still be able to receive new prescriptions for the medication.
A temporary ban on new puberty-blocker prescriptions for British minors experiencing gender dysphoria was already put in place over the summer. Wednesday’s announcement extends the ban indefinitely as the government begins clinical trials on the medications starting next year. The ban will be revisited in 2027.
The U.K. ban comes as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Tennessee is one of more than two dozen states that restrict such care in the U.S.
