US President Joe Biden has called efforts to block children's access to sex change surgeries and medication in Florida "close to sinful".
Biden has accused Florida of being "cruel" to young people for it's regulations on gender reassignment - the state's medical boards voted to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-affirming surgeries on children in November 2022.
Speaking in an interview on the Daily Show, Biden said: "What's going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. I mean it's just terrible what they're doing.
"It's not like, you know, a kid wakes up one morning and says ,'You know, I decided I want to become a man' or ‘I want to become a woman.’ What are they thinking about here? They're human beings, they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations."
"To me, it is cruel."
Biden suggested that legislation needed to be passed to ensure children have the right to access this treatment and that those who prevent it are held accountable "much like we did with same-sex marriage".
Meanwhile, an editor for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Kamran Abbasi has warned that children in America are being rushed into gender reassignment surgery without enough "psychological support" or "strength of evidence".
He says that more and more children in the US are "being offered medical and surgical intervention for gender transition, sometimes bypassing any psychological support."
"Much of this clinical practice is supported by guidance from medical societies and associations, but closer inspection of that guidance finds that the strength of clinical recommendations is not in line with the strength of the evidence.
"The risk of overtreatment of gender dysphoria is real."
Referring to a review of the Gender Development Identity Service at the Tavistock Clinic by Hilary Cass, Abbasi said it is important for clinical staff to "question the evidence behind interventions, other than psychological support, being offered to young people seeking gender transition."
"The BMJ has a longstanding and leading position in acknowledging the limits of evidence and advocating against overdiagnosis and overtreatment—even when the state of the science disagrees with individual preferences," he stated.
