ASPS Anti-Trans Statement Architect Pushes Vote At New York's Largest Medical Society This Friday

The age of 19 is, conveniently, the cut-off arbitrarily named in Donald Trump’s anti-trans health care executive order.

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A physician behind the contested, clandestine “position statement” on gender-affirming surgery that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) issued earlier this year is now trying to bring the same anti-trans talking points to the Empire State—and New Yorkers have until this weekend to stop it.

In February, Dr. Scot Glasberg, a Manhattan-based surgeon, was said to have played a role in the production and dissemination of the “position statement” on gender-affirming care by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. But the authorship was not fully publicly known. The ASPS seemingly departed from its normal democratic processes to pass the statement, leaving many clinicians with more questions than answers.

The Feb. 3 statement deployed anti-trans rhetoric and misinformation about gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19, including legal adults. The document stipulated that it was not a “clinical practice guideline,” but it still recommended surgeons “delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.”

What catalyzed this was not a sudden change in research but a sudden regime change. The age of 19 is, conveniently, the cut-off arbitrarily named in Donald Trump’s anti-trans health care executive order.

The same week that the ASPS statement came out was also the deadline for proposals to the Medical Society of the State of New York’s (MSSNY) governing body, which represents 30,000 licensed physicians, medical residents, and students across the state. Glasberg submitted a resolution endorsing the national document he likely helped create, co-signed by the New York State Society of Plastic Surgeons and the NYS Regional Society of Plastic Surgeons.

This week, for the first time, MSSNY’s House of Delegates—its governing body—will gather in person to deliberate the proposals, including Glasberg’s, in Rochester, New York. A vote is expected sometime this weekend.

Dr. Thomas Lee, Executive Vice President of MSSNY, told Erin in the Morning that even if the resolution successfully passes through the committees and the House of Delegates, this does not make it an authoritative rule of medical practice.

“We have no binding power,” Lee said. “We’re not law enforcement. We are not state or federal legislatures.”

But as the largest member organization of medical professionals in the state, MSSNY’s adopted resolutions are declarations of medical and professional principles that can carry a lot of weight.

The ASPS statement, too, was technically not an official and all-encompassing rule. Nonetheless, it was immediately seized upon by Trump officials as a victory for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and branded in anti-trans press coverage as some sort of substantive break in medical consensus on the topic, which there still is not. But the number of hospitals and clinics that began turning away trans youth and legal adults alike, especially for surgeries, continues to climb.

“Dr. Glasberg is essentially attempting to widen the harm caused by what the ASPS was able to put out in a position statement,” said Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, which represents health professionals advancing LGBTQ equality.

“Because there has been such a huge pushback by the membership of ASPS, because of the lack of involvement of real experts in the space, he is now attempting to go through other channels to continue to push his extremist agenda.”

In his resolution, Dr. Glasberg arguably makes a number of misleading statements about the state of gender-affirming care for transgender people. He claims “the available evidence is of low quality and low certainty”; in reality, the evidence base does not differ from most other kinds of care.

Glasberg also says that “mental health support” for “children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria [...] should be prioritized before consideration of surgical options.” This framing feeds into the notion that pre-pubescent children undergo gender-affirming surgeries to treat gender dysphoria. This is categorically false; they do not.

Moreover, mental health evaluations are already a painstaking, often prohibitive part of gender-affirming care for youth; insinuating that psychotherapy could serve as a replacement for other kinds of necessary gender-affirming care is a conversion therapy talking point.

Despite this, Glasberg asks the MSSNY to “endorse the position statement of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons regarding gender affirming surgery for children and adolescents.” Neither Glasberg nor the New York State Society of Plastic Surgeons immediately responded to a request for comment.

Glasberg’s resolution is not the only proposal targeting gender-affirming care at this week’s MSSNY conference. Another proposal, penned by Northwell OB/GYN and former MSSNY president Dr. Arthur Fougner, solicits MSSNY to call for clinical trials into puberty blockers.

Rather than a neutral call for more information, it cites anti-trans pseudoscience and spreads alarmist, politically-charged rhetoric—painting the long-standing medical intervention for transgender and cisgender youth alike as “experimental.”

But Sheldon, of GLMA, was hopeful about the outcome of the votes. “We know that there are very dedicated surgeons, physicians, and practitioners in MSSNY who will do everything they can to utilize actual evidence and science to ensure that these resolutions do not pass.”

Meanwhile, members of the public can submit written input to MSSNY’s governing body at hod@mssny.org.