The leftwing Human Rights Campaign has joined forces with two groups of pediatricians to urge parents and teachers to let children and teenagers choose their own ‘gender identity.’

The new advocacy booklet, “Supporting and Caring For Transgender Children,” is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians. The booklet begins with the story of Jazz Jennings, a boy who decided in 2007 that he is female. Now aged 16, Jazz is a transgender activist who also sells skin-care products for Johnson & Johnson.

The guide urges parents to let their children pick their own gender and to undergo irreversible sexual surgery:

Ideally, though, the child takes the lead in these decisions … Clinicians increasingly embrace a “gender-affirming” approach to children who are gender-expansive or transgender. This approach means focusing on what the child says about their own gender identity and expression, and allowing them to determine which forms of gender expression feel comfortable and authentic

The guide gives the impression that there are “many” unrecognized transgender children:

Misunderstandings about transgender children mean that many still don’t get the support they deserve, and the consequences can be tragic. Fortunately, we know far more than ever before about what these children need to grow up safe and healthy. Across the United States and worldwide, policies and attitudes are changing to better support transgender kids.

To boost the number of gender-conflicted children, the advocacy book also create a new category of child — the “gender-expansive” child. That term is defined as, “Children who do not conform to their culture’s expectations for boys or girls. Being transgender is one way of being gender-expansive, but not all gender-expansive children are transgender.”

Though a study of the 2010 census shows the population of transgender people amounts to one of every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population, HRC states the numbers of transgendered children are growing “as more families decide to affirm their child’s gender identity.” That phrase suggests there are many additional unidentified transgender children because parents are just not affirming their “gender” choice.

HRC states its own commissioned poll found that “35 percent of U.S. likely voters know someone who is transgender,” while 12 percent of that group knew a transgender child or teen.”

The gay group and the medical groups say their guide is for “anyone who knows a transgender or gender-expansive child…and offers suggestions for adults with a transgender child in their life.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been a promoter of leftwing causes, especially Obamacare and the practice of urging pediatricians to ask their child patients about gun ownership during routine office visits. The organization has also issued a policy statement “urging pediatricians and politicians to work together” to “protect children from climate-related threats…”

The new push comes as President Barack Obama has begun strongly backing the new gender ideology, which says government should force Americans to accept other people’s choice of apparent gender. This year, he threatened schools with funding cuts if they don’t end the use of single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms. His administration also backed punishments for children who object to the elimination of distinct single-sex facilities or who refuse to use the female pronoun – ‘her’ – when referring to boys who wish to live as girls, and urged schools to keep parents in the dark about their children’s at-school gender-related activities.

Mainstream pediatricians and professionals are becoming very concerned about the mental health of children in America who are now being exposed to the Obama administration’s promotion of gender ideology in schools and workplaces. These professionals signed onto an open letter that asserts the ideology is “putting the nation’s children at risk.”

The American College of Pediatricians states gender ideology is harmful to children and that, by promoting gender fluidity in its school bathroom directive, the Obama administration is complicit in masking serious mental health issues in children.

The college states:

No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one… A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V)…

“According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty,” the College asserts. “Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”

In contrast, HRC and its partner pediatricians’ groups say “gender dysphoria” must be averted by making sure society comforts the child;

Depending on the child’s age and signs of distress, “gender-affirmative” counseling or therapy can help manage gender dysphoria. However, in many cases, the remedy for dysphoria is gender transition: taking steps to affirm the gender that feels comfortable and authentic to the child. It is important to understand that, for children who have not reached puberty, gender transition involves no medical interventions at all: it consists of social changes like name, pronoun and gender expression.

However, once children have reached puberty, which could be any time between age 9 and 16, HRC and its partner pediatricians recommend body-altering drugs and irreversible surgery for children:

Children beginning puberty may also use puberty-suppressing medication as they explore their gender identity. Both of these steps are completely reversible. Social transition is equally important for adults and older adolescents. People in these age groups may also take additional steps, including gender-affirming hormone therapy and surgeries.

These recommendations clash with the recommendations of Youth Trans Critical Professionals – a group of self-described “left-leaning, open-minded, and pro-gay rights” professionals. The group says it is risky to affirm young people who claim to be transgender and provide them with hormonal and surgical treatments to change their bodies.

“Our concern is with medical transition for children and youth,” say Youth Trans Critical Professionals on their website. “We feel that unnecessary surgeries and/or hormonal treatments which have not been proven safe in the long-term represent significant risks for young people.”

“Policies that encourage — either directly or indirectly — such medical treatment for young people who may not be able to evaluate the risks and benefits are highly suspect, in our opinion,” says the organization, which is composed of psychologists, social workers, doctors, and other professionals.

The professionals express “alarm” that, because of the current trendiness of being transgendered, many young people have decided they are a member of the opposite sex simply as a result of “binges” on social media sites. They describe a process of transgender activists recruiting these young people for their “cult.”

“There is evidence that vulnerable young people are being actively recruited and coached on such sites to believe that they are trans,” the professionals say.

As noted, HRC and its partner pediatricians urge only “gender-affirmative” therapy. Youth Trans Critical Professionals view state prohibitions against other forms of therapy that may help young people evaluate their feelings as dangerous since they may block the process of critical thinking and evaluation of the young person regarding the reasons why he or she desires to become a transgender member of the opposite sex.

They explain:

While the sentiment behind this legislation is laudable, in some cases, it is being interpreted to mean that therapists cannot explore gender identity with a youth who is professing to be trans. This would mean we can’t ask why; we can’t explore underlying mental health issues; we can’t consider the symbolic nature of the gender dysphoria; and we can’t look at possible confounding issues such as social media use or social contagion.

The signers of the open letter write that radical progressives promoting the gender fluid policy for young people are “distorting the law” against a flood of opposition from “the overwhelming majority of Americans.”

They add:

In addition, considering all the possible actions the federal government should be taking to keep us safe — like addressing porous borders, rising terrorism, the weakening economy, the escalating collapse of the Middle East, rising crime rates, etc. — we firmly believe that, in setting bathroom, shower and locker room policies in local schools, the federal government has exceeded its authorities while putting our children’s mental health at risk to politically-driven psychology and their very lives in peril at the hands of potential sexual predators.

The leaders urge others “to join us in opposing this grave threat to children and this abject rejection of law-making by self-government, that manner by which America’s founders intended our constitutional system to function.”