The effort on the part of progressives to push transgender ideology among children appears to have reaped some fruit. According to a recent report, the number of kids receiving “gender-affirming care” has more than doubled over the past decade.

Today, tens of thousands of American children believe they are a different gender from the one they were born as, according to Reuters, which attributes the surge to a “growing recognition of transgender identity and rights even as they face persistent prejudice and discrimination.”

The report also explains that “[a]s the number of transgender children has grown, so has their access to gender-affirming care, much of it provided at scores of clinics at major hospitals.”

The news outlet collaborated with health technology company Komodo Health Inc. to determine how many children have received “gender-affirming care.”

From the report:

In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.

Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021. Reuters found similar trends when it requested state-level data on diagnoses among children covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for lower-income families.

“Gender-affirming care” refers to a variety of “treatments” provided by medical professionals and therapists that are ostensibly designed to improve the mental health of individuals suffering from gender dysphoria. It can involve social transitioning, in which the person wears clothing typically associated with the opposite gender, chooses an opposite-gender name, and decides which pronouns they wished to be called.

If social transitioning is not enough, the child might go through a medical transition, in which they are prescribed puberty blockers and other hormone-altering procedures. Surgical treatment, while less common, has also been used on minor children who believe they are the opposite gender. This can include “top surgery” for young girls, in which their breasts are cut off. It can even go so far as questionable surgical procedures on the child’s genitals.

As if these numbers weren’t startling enough, the report also pointed out that they “are likely an undercount because they didn’t include treatment that wasn’t covered by insurance and were limited to pediatric patients with a gender dysphoria diagnosis.’

These numbers are similar to what Florida Medicaid found a few months ago. It found that pharmaceutical and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria among minors increased drastically. This included a 270 percent increase in the number of children receiving puberty blockers. Meanwhile, talk therapy for minors only increased by 63 percent, which illustrates the disturbing reality that these kids are being pushed into dangerous and irreversible treatments instead of offering actual mental health care.

While parents woke up to the movement to trans their children after 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it was too late for many children. The effort to push transgenderism in K-12 schools began in earnest about a decade ago, and they have already managed to influence thousands of impressionable youths. In essence, progressives had a head start in promoting their destructive agenda.

Now, those who understand the threat this poses to the nation’s children are forced to play catch-up, as they seek weapons to use against those targeting kids. But all is not lost. As more Americans are exposed to the truth about the movement to introduce pernicious medical treatments and introduce damaging ideas to children, the resistance is growing. If this continues, perhaps sane Americans can eliminate this troubling trend.