President Joe Biden’s health team successfully pushed to completely remove age limitations for when children could begin to transition genders.
Email excerpts reveal that Biden’s point person on transgender issues urged the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to drop age requirements for transition and gender-affirming care.
The revelations come as the Supreme Court said this week it would take on a case in its next term that examines if a Tennessee ban on transgender treatment and surgeries for minors is constitutional.
Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Adm. Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman, is heading Biden’s efforts to address transgender issues.
Draft guidelines released in late 2021 recommended lowering age minimums for certain treatments, but now Levine wants to completely ditch the age requirements because she’s worried they will affect access to care.
Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Adm. Rachel Levine (pictured) wants to completely get rid of age requirements for gender reassignment treatment and surgeries because she is ‘very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to care for trans youth and maybe adults’
The previous draft was already loosening restrictions by lowering age minimums to 14 for hormone treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation and facial surgeries and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.
This means that minors would now be able to permanently and irreversibly remove their sex organs.
Email excerpts this week, first reported by The New York Times based on unsealed court documents, recalled conversations a member of WPATH’s guideline development group had with Sarah Boateng, who was at the time serving as Adm. Levine’s chief of staff.
‘She is confident, based on the rhetoric she is hearing in D.C., and from what we have already seen, that these specific listings of ages, under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care,’ the email reads.
‘She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out,’ the unnamed individual added.
Another email claimed Levine ‘was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to care for trans youth and maybe adults, too.’
‘Apparently the situation in the U.S.A. is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them,’ they wrote.
The Supreme Court is taking on a case in its next term that would address a Tennessee law banning transgender treatment and surgeries for minors
Allowing teenagers to undergo transgender treatments and surgeries has always become controversial in the U.S. political world.
Opponents claim teenagers are too young to make such permanent, life-changing decisions.
Supporters, however, insist young people with gender dysphoria are more at risk of depression, suicide and other mental illnesses if their condition is not also addressed physically.
The emails from Levine’s staffer were released this week when legal filings were unsealed in a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care.