The New York Times reported it has emails showing the Biden Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to eliminate age restrictions on surgeries that mutilate the sexual characteristics of teens.
WPATH in 2021 released guidelines on transgender surgical procedures that had age limits for patients, including “14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.”
“Email excerpts from members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recount how staff for Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and herself a transgender woman, urged them to drop the proposed limits from the group’s guidelines and apparently succeeded,” the newspaper wrote.
Levine is the highest-level transgender in the United States government. His job at DHHS appears to be focused on LGBTQAI+ health matters almost exclusively. At 65, Levine was born male and went through most of his life as a male, before taking hormones and undergoing surgical procedures to appear as a woman, changing his name to Rachel and his legal identity to female. He holds a distinctive position in U.S. politics, using his bully pulpit at the nation’s highest level to champion the mutilation of minors and he frequently argues that such treatments can be life-saving.
The emails in question came to light in court filings submitted by Dr. James Cantor, a Toronto-based psychologist and frequent critic of transgender surgery on children. Cantor’s filings supported a 2022 law signed by Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey that bans transgender treatment for minors, a law that has been challenged in court on behalf of sex-surgery-performing doctors by groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and GLAD; the lawsuit can be read at this link.
