Report: 2016 Saw Surge in Danish Children Receiving Transgender Hormone Treatments
The number of Danish children taking hormones to change their gender has surged this year, the partly state-owned news agency Ritzau reported this week.
Copenhagen’s Sexology Clinic initially anticipated it would treat 50 minors this year—a number it surpassed in June. By the end of the year, as many as 130 children may have received hormone treatment there, Ritzau reported.
Denmark has some of the most liberal policies in the world regarding transgender people, including minors.
It allows children older than 12 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria to take hormone suppressors, which have reversible effects; once they turn 16, they qualify for full, sometimes irreversible hormone treatment, and after 18, they may be assessed for surgical gender-reassignment.
In May, Denmark also became the first country in the world to formally declare that transgender people did not have a mental illness. And two years ago, Denmark enacted policies permitting adults to designate their own legal gender, without first consulting a doctor.
Denmark’s surge in transgender children getting hormone therapy is part of a larger regional trend. A Swedish clinic provided hormone therapy for 200 transgender-identifying minors this year, up from just four in 2012, the UK’s Pink News reports. And for the past six years, demand for similar treatment at a British clinic has risen by 50 percent annually.
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