ATLANTA, GA  - Attorney General Chris Carr joined a coalition of 17 states in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas to protect children from experimental transgender treatments that can cause devastating and irreversible damage

Arkansas enacted the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act” in April to prohibit gender transition procedures for minors. Such procedures include the use of puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. The law is being challenged in the case Brandt v. Rutledge.

“Like Arkansas, amici are concerned about the surge in recent years of children suffering from gender dysphoria and other forms of gender-related psychological distress. And like Arkansas—and like plaintiffs—amici are concerned because these vulnerable children are suffering greatly and need help,” the brief states. “The question is how to help them.”

The current trend in the United States toward gender-reassignment treatments for children is unsupported by reliable scientific evidence, the brief contends, noting that other countries such as Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom consider such procedures to be experimental.

A few key excerpts from the brief can be found below:

“One of the few things we know in this area is that most cases of gender dysphoria in children resolve naturally with time, and it’s impossible to know ahead of time whose dysphoria will persist into adulthood and whose won’t. Yet the evidence also shows that nearly all children whose gender dysphoria is treated with puberty blockers to ‘buy time’ will proceed to take cross-sex hormones and seek other medical interventions with irreversible, lifelong consequences—complications such as infertility, loss of sexual function, increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, bone density problems, risk of altered brain development, social risks from delayed puberty, and mental health concerns.”

“Add to this the fact that children cannot weigh long-term risks as adults do because their brains are still developing and they lack life experience. Arkansas recognized how unfair it is to ask children to make a decision with life-long consequences and very little evidence to support the intervention.”

“With the stakes so high, the harms so great, and the known benefits so paltry, the Arkansas legislature did not have to embrace an experimental path in lieu of the one that has served the medical profession so well for so long: First, do no harm.”

Attorney General Carr was joined in the brief, which was led by Alabama, by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.