Puberty Blocker Ban letter to MPs

Puberty Blocker ban

How to write to your MP

Check out https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP to see who your MP is and to get their email address. You can also use https://www.writetothem.com/ if you’re not including any attachments. Write to them will ask you if you have had a response and keep statistics on your MP.
Write an email to them, using either your own ideas or following the tips and suggestions below.

Add your name and address to the bottom of the email, so that your MP knows you are one of their constituents.
Parliamentary protocols mean that MPs can only respond to their own constituents, so please don’t write to other MPs.

Tips and ideas for a good letter

If possible, try to keep your letter short (1 to 2 pages of A4) and include the arguments you feel are most effective.
If you have any personal experience with the topic, such as if you have been personally impacted by the ban, or have taken puberty blockers in the past, then please do discuss your experiences if you feel able to. Personal responses and experiences are more powerful than more general ones.
Similarly, please feel free to use some or all of the arguments listed here, but use your own words to express them if you can and combine them with your own ideas and in a unique way if you are able to.

If you feel unable to use your own words, then please do copy and paste the arguments from this letter, but state where you got the information and that it conveys your own sentiments.

It should go without saying, but please do not include any abusive language, as this will get your letter ignored.
Ask for a response in your letter if you’d like to hear back from your MP on the issue. I’ve heard that not including this can indicate to some MPs that you’re not interested in hearing from them, though they should still take note of your message.
Further resources and tips are available at https://www.writetothem.com/about-qa.

Suggestions and points you could use in your letter

Here are some arguments, points and evidence sources you could use when writing to your MP, urging them to lift the ban on puberty blockers. We’ve split this into recommended sections (ones we suggest you include in your letter) and a selection of other arguments, citations and points you can use. Feel free to include as many or as few of these as you’d like and of course, please add your own arguments, experiences and points as well.

Recommended sections

Introduction - Introduce the topic and give an overview of your points:

The ban was implemented by the previous and current Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in an apparent response to the Cass Review, which itself did not directly call for such a ban.
The Review states there is little evidence that Puberty Blockers are beneficial and states the research is poor.

The review however marked all observational studies as poor and itself only conducted a systematic review, which under the GRADE II methodology is classed as very poor.

According to NHS figures, a typical waiting time for a child to be seen by a gender specialist is 6 years. If they turn 18 before being seen, they then progress to adult services, where they face another 6+ year long waiting list (this information was obtained via a freedom of information request to the NHS https://docs.google.com/document/d/1neOdLdAPHD6wTikLi9s7Y1AFxrOR9FZQjoMvxKIyJGk/edit?tab=t.0).
The inability to access timely treatment, even for serious cases, leads many to obtain puberty blockers via private healthcare, an avenue of access that has now been removed by the ban.
The ban therefore currently leaves transgender children with no medical treatment options for gender dysphoria within the UK, forcing those who can afford it, to take their children overseas for treatment, and leaving those who can’t with no medical pathway.

Existing effects on transgender children and young people and their families:

A preprint paper by Goldsmiths lecturer Dr Natacha Kennedy (Kennedy, 2024) examines the effects of the ban, using a survey for the parents of young transgender people after the ban was implemented.
The parents responding to the survey commented that the ruling seemed to have emboldened transphobes, particularly transphobic politicians and media, by making transphobia more respectable:

“She feels as though the government and media hates her. It’s disgusting that our country is doing this to children.”

As part of this, there has been an increase in delegitimizing language, such as referring to transgender children as ‘gender questioning’:

“It seems since the ban following the Cass Review that it has given politicians, the government, the press and public endorsement to try to further reduce trans youths’ rights and even the word ‘trans’ or ‘transgender’ is being removed from the narrative and there seems to be an erasure of using the word ‘trans’ for youth and it has been replaced with Gender Questioning Children. My child is not gender questioning, they are transgender and have been out for over 9 years and living as themselves. They know who they are and it hurts terribly when people doubt that or don’t accept it.”

Mental health impacts:

The results of the survey show the lack of treatment options has already had a horrifying effect on children and young people’s mental health. Parents noted:

“I have a child who has been suicidal, self-harming and has been unable to leave the house.”
“My child was suicidal and has self-harmed many times as a way to express her
emotional distress at the change in her access to gender affirming care.”
“Distraught. Devastated. Distressed. She had already been through the experience of having her healthcare access stopped after the Bell judgement - she had been due to start blockers that week and they were instantly stopped. This deeply affected her trust in adults responsible for her care, and had a knock on effect on relationships with teachers, club leaders, the GP etc.”

The paper also shows that parents and families have been severely impacted by the ban. They feel powerless to protect their children and abandoned to deal with the impacts alone:

“I am so worried about puberty. I think about it at least once a day. I am deeply

concerned that if she struggles then we are helpless.”

“It has caused direct damage to my mental health by causing panic and confusion. I was left to support a child whose mental health changed for the worst overnight (literally). There was no support for her or parents. There was no warning. I felt confused and desperate and also totally unseen.”
“Watching my child suffer and struggle needlessly due to the decisions made by people who this has zero impact on is single-handedly the hardest thing I've ever had to do as a mother.”

Transphobia and physical safety:

One parent noted that their daughter was now frightened of being outed at school and potentially stabbed because she will go through the wrong puberty:

“I am so afraid for her. She is in stealth at school, afraid of being stabbed and now she will undoubtedly go through the wrong puberty for her.”

With the rise in hate and transphobia, this ban may well put children and young people at physical risk from their peers, which is more dangerous than any safety issues from puberty blockers.

Children who can continue to access blockers:

By contrast, parents of children who were still able to access puberty blockers report that they are deeply relieved and that their children are thriving, thanks to the medication they need. The benefits of puberty blockers are clear:

“I honestly believe my daughter might not be with us if she had been unable to access puberty blockers....”
“He no longer attempts suicide and has started going to school again.”
“....She is now a young girl with hopes.”
“Her sleep improved, she had more interest in life and hobbies. She was calmer and happier.”

Overall conclusions - Include the conclusions relevant to your points:

The above evidence and arguments show that :

The ban is not firmly based on medical recommendations or evidence.
The Cass Review remains controversial, has been criticised for its quality by various professional institutions and is still being critiqued and analysed. Banning puberty blockers is a politically motivated and scientifically unjustified response.
The UK is an outlier in implementing a ban and goes against the expert opinions of many professional associations and nations worldwide.
The ban has already had a serious detrimental effect on children and adolescents, causing a decline in their mental health and hope for the future. This is borne out by a 2024 study in well respected academic journal Nature Human Behaviour, which examined the mental health of trans children in US states where gender affirming care has been restricted (Lee et al., 2024).
Even assuming the fears around side effects and issues with safety are correct (which is still in contention), the detrimental impacts on mental health mean it is more harmful to not allow puberty blockers to be prescribed, than to allow their prescription.
Some instances of precocious puberty have been treated with puberty blockers for the past 50 years, with no discernible side noticed. By this point if there was a serious issue, it would be endemic.

I therefore ask you to get in contact with Mr Streeting and to urge him to lift the ban, before more children and young people are hurt.

Further suggestions

Existing evidence for the safety and efficacy of puberty blockers:

Contrary to their presentation as being a recent and experimental innovation, Puberty Blockers have been used in the treatment of cisgender children since the mid 70’s and transgender children since the late 90’s, with no discernible epidemic in side effects.
The Cass Review extensively discusses detransition and regret (see all of chapter 4) in the context of medical treatments. Part of the various recommendations seem motivated by trying to minimise detransition/regret.

However, we have decades of observational studies which show that for 90% of people transition is the right course of action and even for the 10% who detransition, only 3% of them detransition because they’re not trans at all. (Numbers are from the preliminary results of the world's largest review of detransition rates in the world, the North American Dare Study.)

Poor citations, evidence and recommendations in the Cass Review:

The Review states there is concern that Puberty Blockers could cause developmental issues, this was based on a systematic review of another review from 2017, which was on female mice (Sisk, 2017).
Yet a decade-long study of 200 trans children which showed no decline in mental acuity, was ignored (Arnoldussen et al., 2022).
There are still ongoing academic critiques of the methodology and outcomes from the report (for example, Grijseels, 2024), which may lead to future medical and research consensus against the recommendations of the report.

For example, the Cass Review included several systematic review papers commissioned by a team from York University as part of its evidence base.
This team graded all observational studies of transgender patients as poor using the GRADE system of review.
However, this is not how the GRADE system should be used. Technical issues like this are part of the reason medical organizations like Yale have been critical and the BMA are carrying out their own analysis of the review.

The Review was conducted without the assistance of Gender Specialists and Endocrinologists due to a perceived bias, that in itself should be cause for concern. Imagine a review of natal services in the UK excluding specialists in that field.

Yet, members of SEGM, a designated trans hate group (Southern Poverty Law Centre, n.d.), participated in the NHS Working Group on Gender Dysphoria, which helped to create the Cass Review (https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDownloadDocument?pubId=&eodoc=true&documentID=136692)

Countries and organisations that have not followed the Cass Review and have not advocated for banning puberty blockers outside a research context:

The proposed research trial on puberty blockers, has been labelled as being potentially unethical and the Council of Europe notes it may be in breach of the Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (concerning Biomedical Research (2005) Article 13), the only international legally binding instrument on the protection of human rights in the biomedical field.
It should also be noted that health authorities and professionals in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many states in the US have rejected the Cass Review’s opinions on puberty blockers (WPATH and USPATH, 2024).
The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) called many of the recommendations from the review ‘harmful’ (The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa, 2024).
Upcoming work on a set of French recommendations for supporting hormonal transition of children and young people makes no reference to the Cass Review or recommendations for banning puberty blockers (Brezin et al., 2024).
Similarly, Japan’s society of Psychology and Neurology also rejected the Cass Review when finalising the fifth edition of their treatment guidelines for gender incongruence (Lakes, 2024).
An Australian study, which had similar findings to the Cass Review, did not result in a recommendation to ban puberty blockers (Payne, 2024).

Minimising harm:

Medical treatment is all about minimising harm. A substantial number of drugs can actually be quite dangerous, or produce risky side effects (such as chemotherapy), but they are prescribed for use because it is more harmful not to use them.
The ban also favours preventing unproven physical side effects above real, demonstrable psychological harm, such as stress, anxiety, bullying and even trauma. This can have long lasting impacts into adulthood, such as increasing the risk of depression and addiction (Kennedy, 2024), yet these impacts are inexplicably not also considered a safety issue.
As one parent who participated in the Natacha Kennedy study said:

“The damage done to my child’s mental well being through this ban far outweighs the medical considerations/implications that would have come in tandem with my child being able to proceed with taking the blockers…”

Discrimination against a specific patient group:

The proposed future trial on the safety and effectiveness of Puberty Blockers only includes transgender children, which is odd if puberty blockers are considered unsafe. If puberty blockers were really dangerous, they would surely be banned outside of research for all children, regardless of identity.