A recently published opinion piece in The New York Times sparked a glimmer of hope that perhaps those on the Left might finally be making their way to the center on one particular issue: that of restricting “gender-affirming” medical treatments for individuals under age 18.

The author of the article, columnist Pamela Paul, laid out several points that parents, most vocally those on the Right, have been contending for years while being called “transphobic” for doing so.

One of the first concepts Paul asked her readers to consider is a person’s developmental stage, particularly when not yet an adult. As illustrated by numerous stories shared throughout her writing, there are young teenagers being ushered through the “gender-affirming” model of care (which instructs medical professionals to trans now and ask questions later) who are growing out of the childhood discomfort with their bodies and, with time and maturity, are realizing that they were improperly diagnosed. And it’s not as rare as Paul and many others have been led to believe. Clarity about identity is coming to these patients after years of relentlessly being fed the false idea that transitioning was the only option to resolve their issues — often after irreversible damage had already been done. These people are discovering too late that time and maturity was the real cure after all.

This an idea that most on the Right did not need to learn from the disastrous trend of allowing children to dictate their own medical plans. Paul raises a valid concern: how the ostensibly non-controversial issue of whether kids are mature enough to make life-altering decisions about their bodies has inhibited our ability to find common ground in the care of these struggling young people.

Paul, though, couldn’t resist the leftist default of fueling political division by bringing up the name of the former president, Donald Trump, thereby communicating her leftist fealty even if she appears to be leaning right in a quest for civil conversation. “While Donald Trump denounces ‘left-wing gender insanity’ and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic,” she writes, “parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.”

Among several other points that Paul makes, she allows victims to tell their stories in detail, exposing her audience to the fact that many of these teenagers were fed misinformation about their diagnoses, the harmful and life-long effects of the drugs that they were almost immediately prescribed, and the deep regret they have for unnecessarily destroying their once-healthy bodies.

To her credit, she also includes comments and concerns from medical staff who have worked in this field and have witnessed firsthand the explosion of children seeking treatment for gender dysphoria — despite having had no history of discomfort in their bodies prior to their first doctor’s visit. These medical professionals also confirm that the fight against trans activists even to allow their experiences in practice to be shared on a public platform has been harrowing and frightening.

Oregon marriage and family counselor Stephanie Winn treated mentally struggling children with immediate use of the “gender-affirming” model, as she’d been trained to do. In 2020, however, she came across videos of young adults who once believed that they, too, were transgender but had returned to their biological sex and respective pronouns. Winn had been told that this was rare, and she thus started to doubt the approach that she had been told was the best way forward for her own patients. It was her questions, not her compliance in permanently altering children’s bodies, that nearly resulted in the loss of her medical license. This caused her to stop treating minors in her practice entirely and to lay low instead.

In her own words, “I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me.”

As a result of the backlash, it has been difficult for parents to get the pros and cons to better navigate this minefield with their own children.

Pamela Paul outlines a long list of points. While many of us on the Right have heard all of these things repeatedly, many of Paul’s readers are likely hearing these stories for the first time. They are being asked to consider that perhaps the science is not settled and that not all doctors agree.

So, we will take the concessions as slowly as they may come, especially if it keeps even one child’s healthy body off of the medical chopping block.

Update: Times staffers evidently threw a tantrum over the paper having published Paul’s op-ed, blasting a “hostile work environment” and so forth. It was predictable.