From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

An NHS-backed trial will administer puberty blockers to children as young as 10 despite serious harms and is facing legal action from a prominent detransitioner.

Over 200 children in the United Kingdom will be injected with puberty blockers as part of an experiment on the effects of “gender transitioning.”

In November, King’s College London announced the Pathways Trial, which will track 226 gender-confused children as they take puberty blockers that are known to damage fertility, bone density, and brain development.

“Right now, there isn’t enough information about the possible benefits or risks that young people with gender incongruence may experience when taking puberty suppressing hormones,” a press release reads. “PATHWAYS TRIAL aims to help fill this gap in the evidence about what we know.”

READ: HHS study confirms dangers of transgender drugs, surgeries for minors

The Puberty Suppression and Transitional Healthcare with Adaptive Youth Services core trial, will administer puberty blockers to 226 children, from ages 10 to 15 years old, recruited over three years from the NHS.

The children will be divided into two groups and receive the drugs 12 months apart. After being given the drugs, the children will receive ongoing therapy, family counseling, and monitoring for two years.

Researchers claimed that the study has been “carefully checked by independent scientists” and is “overseen by two groups of people who are independent from the research team and the funders.”

Prominent detransitioner and outspoken activist Keira Bell condemned the experiment as a “betrayal of the children it claims to help” in a recent op-ed article published by The Telegraph.

“It will undoubtedly lead to infertility and lack of sexual function, to name only a couple,” she warned. “A child cannot fully understand these effects, let alone those that are unknown.”

On November 14, Bell, along with British psychotherapist James Esses, launched pre-action, demanding disclosure of trial documents. If the documents are not released, the pair promised to demand a judicial review.

📢 PRE-ACTION LETTERS SENT

Under instruction of @JamesEsses and I, legal have sent pre-action letters today to the regulatory bodies in charge of the puberty blocker trial.

They have been playing it sneaky, refusing to provide those important details to us since early this… pic.twitter.com/FVzAo2gVhO

— Keira Bell (@KBtheYoungOG) November 14, 2025

The research, approved and funded by the NHS, comes after puberty blockers were banned last year after a major review exposed the practice as dangerous and medically baseless.

The Cass Review is the world’s largest review into transgender interventions for minors. Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician commissioned by the NHS to review the transgender “services” being made available to gender-confused minors, was scathing in her analysis.

Cass found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations” and that while these drastic interventions should be approached with extreme caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of [so-called] gender care for children.”

LifeSiteNews has compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against “transgender” surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.

Moreover, internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have shown that doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer, but have prescribed them anyway.

The internal documents, dubbed the “WPATH FILES,” include emails and messages from a private discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.

There is also overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.

Indeed, the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.

A study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.

From LifeSiteNews

By Charles Richards

315 students and 12 teachers were abducted from St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school last week

Attacks on Christians in Nigeria have reached new heights after more than 300 students and staff at a Catholic school in Papiri were abducted last week.

“I make a heartfelt appeal that the hostages be immediately released, and I urge the competent authorities to take appropriate and timely decisions to ensure their liberation,” Pope Leo said after Sunday Mass this weekend in St. Peter’s Square.

On Friday, gunmen forcibly took some 315 students and 12 of their teachers from St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Niger State, making it one of the worst kidnappings the country has ever seen.

“The gunmen were on about 50 motorcycle bikes while controlling them,” one of the children’s fathers told the BBC. “Some children were falling and the men would kick them and instruct them to stand up.”

Prayers seem to have been answered as the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has reported that 50 students have been returned to their families.

“The pupils escaped between Friday and Saturday and have reunited with their parents as they could not return to the school after they escaped,” a spokesman for CAN’s Niger State chapter said.

Niger State promptly closed all schools after the abduction.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles operate St. Mary’s. The group’s leader, Sr. Mary Barron, asked for “prayers and spiritual solidarity” in an appeal following news of the kidnapping.

“We believe deeply in the power of unified prayer. We need as many people as possible to lift this community before God during this moment of suffering and uncertainty. May God, in God’s infinite mercy, protect the innocent, guide leaders to act with justice, and bring all those taken back home safely,” she said.

READ: Trump’s UN ambassador calls persecution of Nigerian Christians a ‘genocide’

Friday’s attack is the third major incident reported in recent weeks. Last Wednesday, gunmen killed at least two people and kidnapped several more in an attack on a church in Eruku, a town in the central Kwara State. Also last week attackers abducted 25 girls from a predominantly Muslim boarding school.

On Tuesday, November 18, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz described the ongoing slaughter of Christians in the country as a “genocide wearing the mask of chaos.”

Waltz made his remarks during an event hosted by the United States Mission to the United Nations. Following Waltz’s address, best-selling rapper Nicki Minaj took to the podium to express her own concerns. She previously praised President Donald Trump’s social media posts condemning the killings.

Trump previously announced that he is preparing the U.S. military to potentially “wipe out” Islamic terrorists who are killing and kidnapping Christians in the country.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has canceled foreign trips to South Africa and Angola, where he was scheduled to attend an African Union-European Union summit and a G20 summit. Tinubu has sent a delegation of government officials led by Nigeria’s national security advisor to the U.S. to meet with American government officials about the situation.

Findings published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) highlight many of the state-sponsored attacks on Christians in the country. In its 2025 report, the USCIRF urged the U.S. government to designate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.” It also noted that “the Nigerian government remains slow or, at times, appears unwilling to respond to this violence, creating an environment of impunity for the attackers.”