Republicans in the House are opening an investigation into top Department of Health and Human Services officials over the influence they exerted on gender-transition surgery recommendations performed on minors.
Email excerpts between staff for Admiral Rachel Levine, Health and Human Service’s assistant secretary for health, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in June showed Levine’s office pressured the group to drop its age requirements for minors to obtain transgender surgeries in its updated September 2022 Standards of Care.
GOP Representative from Michigan Lisa McClain, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on health, wrote to Xavier Becerra, HHS Secretary, Tuesday, requesting all email documentation on the “political interference by HHS” into recommendations for treating youth gender dysphoria.
“The Biden Administration’s advocacy for expanding the pool of vulnerable children subjected to life-altering procedures they may later regret is reprehensible,” wrote McClain to Becerra. “Emails indicating that this advocacy was done for political advantage — possibly to satisfy extremist elements of its base — is even more outrageous.”
WPATH draft guidelines, published in December 2021, recommend lowering the minimum age for cross-sex hormone treatments to 14, facial and breast augmentation surgery to 16, transgender mastectomies to 15, and transgender genital surgeries to 17.
After the draft guidance was released, members of Adm. Levine’s staff, including Sarah Boateng, the chief of staff, contacted WPATH officials to ask them to remove the new age minimums from the recommendations.
An unnamed WPATH member’s specific email documents a conversation with Boateng, in which she said Levine “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.”
Additional emails, which were revealed as part of litigation regarding state-level bans on transgender medicine for minors, indicated HHS staff and Levine were “keen to bring the trans health agenda forward.”
Levine, who is a biological male who identifies as a woman, underwent a medical gender transition in 2011. Levine expressed having “no regrets” in 2019 about transitioning later in life after being married and fathering two kids.
White House spokesperson stated that the Biden administration “does not support surgery for minors”
After these emails surfaced in June, a WH spokesperson said the Biden administration “does not support surgery for minors.”
“Despite WPATH’s initial minimum wage recommendations, Admiral Levine and 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,” wrote McClain.
McClain is requesting specifically all communications between relevant HHS staff and Levine with the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and numerous other prominent children’s health organizations that have promoted transgender medicine for minors.
Since 2021, over 20 states have enacted some form of restriction on age on gender-transition medicine for minors because of a lack of long-term evidence for the efficacy of reducing harmful mental health conditions.
Although surgery isn’t the first line of treatment for adolescents with gender dysphoria, there have been numerous high-profile cases of teenagers who underwent surgeries as part of their process for medical transition and have come to regret surgical intervention.
