The Alaska Medical Board voted to protect minors in the state from gender transition procedures through advancing draft regulations deeming such interventions as “unprofessional medical conduct.”
Under the proposed regulations, unprofessional medical conduct would include “providing medical or surgical intervention to treat gender dysphoria or facilitate gender transition by altering sex characteristics inconsistent with the biological sex at birth, including but not limited to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomy, phalloplasty, or genital modification to a minor under the age of 18 years old.”
The proposed regulation would place such conduct within the same behavioral category as practicing medicine while drunk.
Medical board licensees who offer such surgical and chemical procedures would be subject to disciplinary action under the board, including a medical license loss.
The regulations are subject to review from the state Department of Law and a subsequent 20-day public comment period. The regulation would be discussed in a possible oral comment session in a board meeting before a final vote.
The board, which unanimously passed the measure, was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
“While compassion requires us to care for the youth in distress,” board member and neurosurgeon Dr. David Paulson said, “we must recognize our duty to protect them from medical and surgical interventions that risk permanently altering their bodies or futures before they’re fully capable of mature consent.”
Dr. Matt Heilala, the board member who drafted the proposed regulation, has resigned, now running for Alaska governor. Heilala says that Dunleavy supports the regulation.
Across the U.S., 27 states have restricted gender transition for minors through laws. However, this is Alaska’s first serious regulatory achievement.
Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist and member of the Executive Committee of the American College of Pediatricians, spoke to a Christian podcast, Washington Watch, about the medical board’s action.
“When the state medical board acts, as Alaska has done … then there need to be no laws at the state level,” he said. “They don’t have to establish something that the state medical board should be doing in the first place.”
“The news from Alaska is heartening in that the state medical board has taken up a position that really every state medical board in the country needs to consider,” Van Meter said. “It’s not yet official, but we are looking forward to the final word on the appropriate passage of this particular recommendation.”
