The EWTN News portal (February 5, 2026) reports the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has issued a position statement recommending against so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries for minors under 19 due to “insufficient evidence” of benefits and irreversible harm. This break from mainstream medical associations cites the 2024 UK Cass Review and 2025 US HHS report documenting lack of evidence for such interventions. While surgeons Alfonso Oliva and Mehmet Oz applaud the move as protecting children, the article notes the American Medical Association’s continued ambiguity. USCCB’s Bishop Barron is quoted supporting Trump’s 2025 executive order banning these procedures as “surgical mutilation.”
Natural Law Condemns All Mutilation Regardless of Age
The ASPS’s limited rejection of child mutilation fails to address the intrinsic evil (malum in se) of all gender-confused surgeries. Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (1930) declares: “Private individuals have no other power over the members of their bodies than that which pertains to their natural ends” (§23). The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches destruction of healthy organs violates the Fifth Commandment – a truth unchanged by modern “gender theory” (theoria generis). This medical society’s 19-year threshold accepts the premise that mutilating adolescents becomes licit upon reaching arbitrary age markers, directly opposing Leo XIII’s condemnation of age-based morality in Libertas Praestantissimum (1888).
Modernist Language Masks Grave Sin
The article’s repeated use of “gender-affirming care” exemplifies the hermeneutic of rupture condemned by pre-conciliar popes. Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950) warned against “those who through recklessness in speech regard the sacred deposit of truth as an object of free interpretation” (§21). By adopting the neologism “gender dysphoria” rather than the traditional “disorder of sexual identity,” the text participates in ideological subversion. The ASPS statement’s focus on “low certainty of benefits” rather than moral absolutes reflects the naturalism condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “Human reason is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood” (Proposition 3).
Omission of Supernatural Consequences
Nowhere does the analysis mention eternal damnation awaiting those who destroy God’s image through surgical rebellion. St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology teaches: “Mutilatio corporis (mutilation of the body) without just cause constitutes grave matter for mortal sin” (Lib. III, Tract. IV, Cap. I, Dub. 2). The article’s clinical discussion of “potential harms” ignores the Summa Theologica where Aquinas states: “He who sins against nature…sins against God Himself who established nature” (II-II, Q154, A12). Bishop Barron’s statement about “life-altering consequences” remains naturalistic when it should have cited Galatians 6:7: “God is not mocked.”
Complicity of Conciliar Structures
The USCCB’s tepid response exemplifies the conciliar sect’s failure to proclaim Catholic truth without compromise. While correctly opposing surgical mutilation, their statements never invoke hell, divine judgment, or the necessity of penance – a silence Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis as “the abolition of the supernatural order” (§39). The article’s reference to “psychotherapy” as alternative treatment dangerously suggests psychological techniques can replace ex opere operato grace from sacramental confession and spiritual direction.
Medical Establishment’s Masonic Roots
The ASPS’s focus on liability exposure rather than moral truth reveals medicine’s descent into scientism – the Masonic dogma condemned in Leo XIII’s Humanum Genus (1884). When surgeons cite “variability in legal environments” rather than Hippocrates’ oath, they fulfill St. Pius X’s warning: “The enemies of the Church…favor the principle that the State must be separated from the Church” (Our Apostolic Mandate, 1910). The article’s celebration of Trump’s executive order as solution ignores that no civil authority can legitimize what God forbids – a truth articulated in Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925): “He must reign in the will of men.”
Source:
Plastic surgeons group recommends against gender surgeries on minors due to low evidence of benefit (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.02.2026