Katherine transferred her daughter to a gender clinic that specialized in autism. “That’s when I was told, okay, we needed to put her on puberty blockers”—medications that induce chemical menopause to artificially halt puberty. The gender clinicians stressed that puberty blockers were a way to “buy time” by pressing the “pause button on puberty,” until they could all decide whether Maddie should resume normal puberty as a girl or go straight to cross-sex hormones and become a “man.” They assured Katherine that puberty blockers, such as Lupron, were “perfectly safe” and “well studied.”
