The Biden administration has said it opposes gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors, deviating from previous statements that broadly support gender-affirming health care for young people and angering LGBTQ groups that supported President Biden in the race against the former president. Trump.
A White House spokesperson told The Hill in an email that while the administration supports gender-affirming care for minors, which represents a continuum of care, it believes that gender-affirming surgical care, specifically, should be reserved for adults.
The administration’s statement, which was first reported by The 19th News, drew swift criticism from influential LGBTQ organizations and figures who accused the government of abandoning its commitment to transgender youth and going back on its promise not to insert politics into private medical decisions.
“The Biden administration is dead wrong on this,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which supported Biden and invested millions in his re-election. “It’s wrong in science and wrong in substance. It is also inconsistent with other steps the administration has taken to support trans youth.”
Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ people in the South, called the administration’s statement “cowardly.”
“It is a troubling concession to the right’s attack on transgender Americans, falling prey to their false narratives about surgical care and betraying their commitment to equality and trust in the medical community,” Scott said in a statement. “Let’s be very, very clear: the government has no business inserting itself into private medical decisions that should be solely between patients, their caregivers and patients’ parents or guardians.”
“It is dangerous to begin endorsing categorical bans or limits on health care, and there is no justification for restricting transgender youth’s access to the same care that many cisgender youth receive every year – that is literally the definition of discrimination,” she said. “We demand that the Biden administration withdraw this thoughtless statement and work to undo its damage.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the reaction.
The Biden administration first expressed some skepticism about gender-affirming surgeries for minors last week in a New York Times reportwhich came in response to another Times report that the team of Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), urged the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization dedicated to transgender health care research, to remove minimums of age for gender-affirming medical care from its guidelines for minors.
The draft guidelines, released at the end of 2021, recommended reducing the minimum age to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries and 17 for surgeries on genital or reproductive organs. Gender-affirming medical care of any kind, however, should only be recommended to minors with a “well-documented” history of gender incongruence and who demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity” necessary to provide informed consent to treatment, of according to the draft. guidelines.
The final WPATH guidelines, released in 2022, completely eliminated minimum age requirements, including for surgery. The group said the change will, among other things, “eliminate unnecessary barriers to care” and promote a more individualized approach.
Other medical organizations and health professionals have stated that maturity and social support are better indicators of whether gender-affirming care is appropriate than minimum age. The Endocrine Society, a nonprofit organization that focuses on endocrinology and hormone research, recommends waiting until age 18 for genital, or “bottom,” surgery, and such a procedure being performed on minors is extremely rare.
In a statement to the Times, an HHS spokesperson said that Levine, who is transgender, “shared her opinion with her team that the publication of 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.”
HHS did not respond to questions from The Hill about the Biden administration’s stance on gender-affirming surgery for minors. A WPATH spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
The administration’s latest statement on surgery for transgender minors departs from the president’s speeches, public statements and executive actions that express unequivocal support for gender-affirming care and denounce state laws designed to restrict or prohibit treatment, particularly for young people.
Twenty-five Republican-led states since 2021 have adopted laws prohibiting transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming health care, which leading professional medical organizations say it is medically necessary. In some cases, state law limits care for trans adultsin addition to minors.
In Arizona, surgeries — but not other care — are prohibited for transgender youth under 18. Access to other treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, is protected by an executive order signed last year by the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs.
In Ohio, a state Department of Health rule also prohibits minors from undergoing gender-affirming surgeries, although Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has called the claim that doctors are “a fallacy.” performing surgeries on minors in the state.
In April, a federal judge blocked an Ohio law banning gender-affirming medical care more generally for minors, and enforcement of a similar law in Montana was suspended last fall. In June, a federal judge struck down a Florida law that banned access to gender-affirming health care for minors and some adults, and the first ban in Arkansas was ruled unconstitutional last year.
At the request of the Biden administration, the Supreme Court said late last month that it will decide during its next term whether bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors are constitutional.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
