"Protecting youth means acting with compassion, but also with caution. I think that our first duty is to do no harm, and irreversible choices should wait until they can be made with an adult's understanding," declared medical board member and neurosurgeon David Paulson. He added, "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."

The draft language was proposed by board member Dr. Matt Heilala, whom the board assigned to draft the statement at its June meeting. "Board members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature," according to the Alaska Commerce Department. Heilala was one of five doctors on the eight-member board. He resigned after the August meeting because he is one of eight Republicans running to replace Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R), who cannot seek reelection due to term limits.

Before taking up the issue on their own, the Alaska Medical Board first waited to see whether the Alaska state legislature would follow the lead of 27 other states and enact language restricting gender transitions for minors. However, the legislature failed to do so (although Republicans technically hold a majority of seats in both the House and the Senate, a handful of Republican legislators have joined a coalition caucus with Democrats, giving Democrats effective control of the Alaska legislature).

But, regulations by the state medical board are a perfectly acceptable substitute, according to pediatric endocrinologist Quentin Van Meter, a member of the Executive Committee of the American College of Pediatricians. "When the state medical board acts, as Alaska has done ... then there need to be no laws at the state level," he said on "Washington Watch." "They don't have to establish something that the state medical board should be doing in the first place."

The reason is that regulations by the state medical board are "how physicians are regulated," he explained. "This is how they are kept within the standards of care. This is how they are then taken to task if they step outside those standards. ... The state medical boards can look at people who step outside the standards of care repeatedly and [let] them know that they have been found wanting in their behaviors and their conduct. ... They can sanction the physicians and remove their license to practice in the state."

Many state laws restricting gender transition procedures on minors authorize state medical boards to impose professional discipline on health care professionals who violate the law. These laws often direct the medical boards to draft regulations to this effect.

However, it is not unprecedented for the medical board to restrict gender transition procedures to minors, based on the authority already delegated to it by the state legislature. In November 2022, Florida state medical boards implemented a professional regulation that protected minors from gender transition procedures, months before the legislature was able to act (in that case, the legislature actually enacted even stronger protections, including criminal penalties).

"This is a first step in a multi-step process," explained Alaska Medical Board member Brent Taylor. The medical board must submit the draft language for review to the attorney general's office. After that review is complete, the board must make the language available for 30 days of public comment. It may also choose to receive oral comments on the regulation at one of its four annual meetings. Any amendments to the language, as well as a vote on final adoption, would have to wait until at least the next meeting of the Alaska Medical Board.

"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 contended. "It's not yet official, but we are looking forward to the final word on the appropriate passage of this particular recommendation." Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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