The Biden administration has now come out in opposition to gender transition surgeries for minors. This is after a song and dance that involved a 2022 press conference and White House event on Transgender Visibility Day, followed by a 2023 Congressional hearings on the harms of so-called gender-affirming care to minors.
As RedState reported on Tuesday, discovery in the lawsuit between LGBTQ lobbying groups and the State of Alabama over its Vulnerable Child Protection Act (VCAP) uncovered Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine lobbying the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to remove all age restrictions on these surgical and pharmaceutical procedures. WPATH is the “expert” agency that sets the standards for so-called gender-affirming surgeries and transgender treatments, and WPATH’s research is being used by the DOJ and left-wing groups as the foundation for their court challenges.
Isn’t it interesting that this announcement comes on the heels of a horrendous debate performance by Biden on Thursday, with resulting poll numbers that place him into the sub-basement? Icing on the cake: the legacy media and Democrat caterwauling for him to step down because they are shocked, shocked, I tell you, that he is cognitively unfit for the office of president.
The Biden administration said this week that it opposed gender-affirming surgery for minors, the most explicit statement to date on the subject from a president who has been a staunch supporter of transgender rights.
The White House announcement was sent to The New York Times on Wednesday in response to an article reporting that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for minors.
The draft guidelines would have lowered the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. The final guidelines, released in 2022, removed the age-based recommendations altogether.
“Adm. Levine shared her view with her staff that publishing the proposed lower ages for gender transition surgeries was not supported by science or research, and could lead to an onslaught of attacks on the transgender community,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in a statement on Friday evening.
This is a pyrrhic victory: The administration will still push for the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. As journalist Michael Schellenberger notes:
Just because the tide is turning does not mean that the end of gender mistreatment is imminent. Indeed, notes the Times in its piece about the Biden administration’s rejection of trans surgeries for minors, “Federal officials did not elaborate further on the administration’s position.” It’s conceivable that Democratic politicians are attempting to hold the line at surgeries while insisting that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are “reversible” and thus acceptable.
But at least the irreversible damage of body mutilation on minors will no longer have government sanction or advocacy. It will also strengthen the case for states that have already passed laws banning these medical procedures.
But this policy reversal begs several questions:
Will the Department of Justice drop all charges against Dr. Eithan Haim? Haim is the Baylor surgeon who leaked documents from Texas Children’s Hospital that proved the hospital was secretly performing transgender surgeries on minors.
Or does the DOJ plan to drop its suits against West Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee for its laws banning gender transition for minors? On the 2022 Transgender Visibility Day, the DOJ sent a warning shot to state attorneys general letting them know that any law attempting to restrict minors from receiving these gender-affirming procedures is a violation of constitutional rights under the 14 Amendment. So much for federalism.
The Justice Department said last week that states seeking to block transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care may be violating federal law — and signaled that it is prepared to pursue legal action or support existing litigation against states seeking such restrictions.
In a letter to all state attorneys general, sent on Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that state laws preventing trans minors from accessing gender-affirming care — by blocking parents or guardians from following a medical professional’s advice, as states like Texas and Arkansas have attempted — may infringe on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
Should Biden manage to stick around, and should a second presidential debate with Donald Trump happen in September, Biden’s weaponization of the DOJ against his enemies, whether they be political or policy, should be fair game and further explored, especially with questions surrounding Biden’s mental fitness. As we see from the headlines and people lining up to put Biden out to pasture, expect more oppositional research to drop that exposes their backdoor dealings, and expect it to be used to get Biden to backtrack and even get him out the door completely.