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Laser hair removal and cross-sex hormones will no longer be provided to gender-confused students at the University of Florida starting this summer.
The student health center previously provided these services to gender-confused students to help them look like the opposite sex. However, the clinic cited federal and state policies in announcing its decision to cease offering the procedures effective May 1, according to the Alligator.
State data for 2018 to 2022 shows “over 700 patients underwent hormone replacement therapy, 90 received prescriptions for puberty blockers and 41 underwent gender-affirming surgery,” the student newspaper reported. However, this is across all University of Florida health centers, not just the student clinic.
A state law placing limits on both minors and adults receiving the drugs and surgeries is currently pending in the courts. The Supreme Court also upheld the rights of states to regulate the procedures for minors last summer. These procedures can include removing healthy reproductive organs or taking drugs that can lead to permanent infertility.
The pro-LGBT organization Equality Florida did not respond to two emails and a phone call in the past three weeks from The College Fix, asking for comment on the decision.
However, a critic of transgender ideology praised the decision in emailed comments to The Fix.
“Obviously, it’s a refreshingly sane decision, though they obviously made it for the wrong reasons – because of the state laws forcing them,” MassResistance President Brian Camenker told The Fix.
“But even just affirming that mental illness instead of treating it is destructive,” he said. “The whole idea of gender affirming care is medical quackery and clear malpractice.”
Camenker said gender-confused adults should be treated like others with a mental illness and he suggested there are underlying problems when someone says they are transgender.
“People need help healing from whatever traumas are behind this problem, and be given a pathway toward normalcy,” he said. “It should never involve the barbaric practice of hormones, puberty blockers, or medical procedures.”
‘Simply call’ the health center and get hormones
The health center previously offered the services with minimal safeguards.
“The process of getting gender-affirmative care at the UF Student Health Care Center does not require a letter from a therapist or additional steps that often prevent transgender individuals from getting the care they need,” the Gainesville Sun previously reported in 2021.
“Instead, students simply call the Student Health Care Center and mention that they are interested in transgender care,” the newspaper reported.
The initiative to provide the services to gender-confused individuals came from Dr. Ann Grooms, who is a pediatrician within the university’s medical system.
“My goal is to make it very comfortable for every transgender, binary, nonbinary, LGBTQ student to be who they are and for them to be treated in a very respectful fashion, like we would want everybody to,” Grooms said in 2021.
University of Florida is not the only red state university that offers transgender drugs and surgeries to students as well as minors.
The Fix previously reported in 2022 that at least thirteen universities in Republican-led states helped children remove their body parts or take drugs to look like the opposite sex.
At least some of those institutions have rolled back their services following state laws, such as the University of Oklahoma Children’s Hospital.
Recently, two major medical groups voiced concerns about operating on gender-confused minors.
The American Medical Association, in a reversal of past support, said minors should probably wait before undergoing surgeries. The statement followed a new policy statement from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons which warned against the procedures, at least for kids.
ASPS recommends that surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old,” the group wrote on Feb. 3. It based the decision on a review of existing evidence, including a detailed Department of Health and Human Services study which raised serious concerns about the benefits of the surgical and chemical procedures.
The LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign meanwhile has been critical of Florida’s attempts to limit the procedures.
“There is no sound reason to deprive people of the ability to make best-practice, medically necessary healthcare decisions for themselves—especially when the trade-off is the heartache and distress of children and parents,” the group stated in 2024, following a court ruling on the state’s prohibitions.
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