From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The England High Court of Justice ruled that the United Kingdom’s ban on puberty blockers for children is lawful.

In a July 29 decision, Mrs. Justice Lang upheld a ban on puberty blockers for gender-confused children in England, Scotland, and Wales, after it was challenged by an LGBT activist group, TransActual.

“In my view, it was rational for the first defendant to decide that it was essential to adopt the emergency procedure to avoid serious danger to the health of children and young people who would otherwise be prescribed puberty blockers during that five- to six-month period,” Lang ruled.

Lang based her ruling on the Cass Review, an independent assessment of transgender interventions for youth commissioned by England’s National Health Service.

The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no proof behind transgender activists’ assertion that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by so-called “gender-affirming care,” in which a young person is subjected to “social transition,” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or mutilating surgery.

Nor, she said, is there evidence that “transitioning” kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of “gender transitions” claim. These findings backed up what critics of transgenderism have been saying for years.

“In my judgment,” Lang explained, “the Cass review’s findings about the very substantial risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers, and the recommendation that in future the NHS prescribing of puberty blockers to children and young people should only take place in a clinical trial, and not routinely, amounted to powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions on the supply of puberty blockers on the grounds that they were potentially harmful.”

In March, following the publication of the review, U.K. introduced a clinical policy that announced that it would not administer puberty blockers to children.

Later in May, the Conservative government doubled down on its decision, introducing an emergency ban on puberty blockers from being prescribed by private and European prescribers.

This decision was then challenged by TransActual, which falsely claimed the emergency order banning puberty blockers for children was not backed by evidence.

However, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density,  cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.

There is also overwhelming evidence that those who undergo so-called “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not subjected to irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent so-called “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.

Indeed, the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to encourage them in their confusion but to show them the truth.

A new study on the side effects of transgender so-called “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone the surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.