Biden Admin Pushed Group to Cut Trans Surgery Age Requirements, Faces Probe

A U.S. House Committee has launched a probe of the Biden-Harris administration after reports that the White House pressured the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, a leading professional nonprofit association, to remove the age limits for transgender surgeries and drugs for minors.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., chair of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, sent a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra opening the probe, which requests all documentation and communication around the alleged “political interference” and whether HHS has pressured other medical groups to alter its guidance.

Critics have raised concerns that those surgeries, which do irreversible changes to the body, are often regretted. They argue that children cannot really understand or consent to the procedures, which include removing breasts or male genitalia and rendering boys and girls permanently unable to have children of their own one day.

“We are concerned that HHS officials, acting in their official capacity, inappropriately applied pressure for changes to international pediatric medical standards,” the letter said. “Officials applied this inappropriate pressure by urging for the removal of age limits that expands the pool of children and adolescents recommended for irreversible gender transition surgical procedures.”

Pointing to reporting from The New York Times, the committee said in its letter that WPATH published a draft of its recommendations online which included age limits of 14 for hormone drugs, “age 15 for transgender mastectomies, age 16 for transgender breast augmentation and facial surgery, and age 17 for transgender genital surgeries and hysterectomies.”

Emails reportedly show that Biden administration officials, including Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for HHS who is a transgender woman, pressured the group to remove the age limits altogether. McClain’s committee said emails show WPATH staff initially did not want to do so but gave in to the pressure.

“Despite WPATH’s initial minimum age recommendations, Admiral Levine and [Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Sarah] Boateng’s clear, concise instructions to remove age recommendations from SOC-8 led to their ultimate removal, notwithstanding the Biden Administration’s now public statement that it opposes providing such surgeries to minors,” the letter said.

“The Biden Administration’s advocacy for expanding the pool of vulnerable children subjected to life-altering procedures they may later regret is reprehensible,” the letter said. “Emails indicating that this advocacy was done for political advantage – possibly to satisfy extremist elements of its base – is even more outrageous.

“Dr. Marci Bowers, the president of WPATH, has gone so far as to dismiss the responsibility of medical providers for procedures performed on child patients who she has said must ‘own’ final transition decisions and “should not be blaming the clinician or the people who helped guide them” for later regrets about irreversible surgeries,” the letter added.

McClain’s subcommittee and the Federal Workforce Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, also have an investigation into reports that healthcare providers have been fraudulently billing Medicaid for pediatric transgender work.

Walz’s ‘trans refuge’ law harms youth, weakens parents’ rights
by Matt Sharp, thehill.com opinion contributor - 08/26/24 1

Last year, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed so-called “trans refuge” legislation, joining California and several other states in passing measures that harm vulnerable youth. The Washington Post recently came to Walz’s defense, claiming that “conservatives” were “falsely accusing him of allowing the state to terminate parental custody if parents prevent their trans children from receiving gender-affirming care.”

But the reality is there’s nothing false about that accusation. This law can indeed separate kids from loving parents’ custody. Every parent in America should be concerned about it and laws like it.

Imagine a teenage girl in Ohio who regularly visits her rather woke aunt in Minnesota. The aunt thinks that her teenage niece’s parents aren’t sufficiently “affirming” of the girl’s desire to adopt a male identity. The parents know the devastating and irreversible harm puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones would cause their daughter, and so they’re not about to consent to them. The aunt files a lawsuit in Minnesota to gain custody of the girl and start her on a regime of the drugs.

Normally, Minnesota courts would dismiss the suit, recognizing that Ohio is the proper venue for the case. After all, that is where the niece and her mom and dad live, and where the girl’s pediatrician and counselor (who would have information about the girl’s physical and mental health) are located. Out-of-state attempts to get custody are usually decided based on the child’s home state.

And that makes sense. Custody challenges should be heard in the state where the parents, child, and relevant evidence are located. And they should be decided based on the laws of the home state.

But the Minnesota law and its ilk throw out this commonsense rule. If anyone — a parent, close relative, or even an unrelated adult — seeks custody of a child “for the purpose of obtaining gender-affirming health care,” then that person can take the child to Minnesota, where state courts now have exclusive jurisdiction to hear the case. Those courts will decide custody of the child — and ultimately whether the child will be put on harmful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones — based on Minnesota law.

In other words, as soon as the teenage girl crosses the Minnesota state line with her aunt or to visit her aunt, Minnesota courts are now armed to strip custody away from the girl’s caring parents in Ohio and award it to the aunt, who can immediately start the vulnerable child on dangerous transition drugs.

Indeed, in Walz’s Minnesota, putting kids on a one-way street toward the irreversible damage caused by puberty blockers, hormones and sterilizing surgeries is the official policy of the state.

Let’s not forget, just weeks before signing the law, Walz issued an executive order declaring that Minnesota is “committed to protecting access to” and establishing the state as “a refuge for those who seek and provide” transition drugs and surgeries that growing international evidence confirms cause irreversible harm to a child’s body and brain development.

And it isn’t just woke relatives that receive a “get out of jail free” card when they abscond to Minnesota with a child who has been ripped from the arms of her parents, who are her best advocates and defenders. This law will allow Planned Parenthood and other gender clinics to push life-altering transition drugs on children with no meaningful oversight or accountability.

Under the Minnesota law, Planned Parenthood could easily encourage and even pay expenses for a teenager to travel to the state for harmful transition drugs. And it would do so with assurances that state law shields it, should the parents try to intervene to save their child from the lifelong consequences of these drugs.

snip

Matt Sharp is senior counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom and director of Center for Public Policy.

“What is up with this movement?”

It was ALL top-down, and the people leading this and supporting this need to be JAILED. For many years, we here, rightfully, fought against Female Genital Mutilation because no one should be forced to have any part of their bodies messed around with, especially kids. The Democrats, almost to a person, fought back as hard as they could. We should have asked why back then, but now we know why.

So now we have this crap and, no doubt, Leftists will tell us that the kids get the final word, but what choice do the kids have when they’re stuck with a now-divorced mom who hates her son because he reminds her of her ex, so she has all of the ‘experts’ tell the kid he’s really a girl and it’s time to get his dick cut off? It’s up to state to protect kids, even from their sick moms, when necessary.

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