A top Biden administration health official successfully pressured an international group of medical experts to do away with age limit guidelines for transgender procedures, including gender-changing surgery, for minors, an unsealed court document shows.
Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, feared that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's late 2021 draft guidelines would make it difficult for American transgender youth to obtain access to the procedures, according to email excerpts between WPATH members included in an Alabama court filing.
"We sent the document to Admiral Levine She like[s] the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages will affect access to health care for trans youth and maybe adults too," a WPATH member wrote in one internal email released by psychologist Dr. James Cantor as part of litigation challenging an Alabama law outlawing certain gender transition-related treatments and procedures.
"Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible and [Levine] and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse," the health group member continued.
"She asked us to remove them," the email continued, referring to Levine who identifies as a transgender woman.
"[W]e heard your comments regarding the minimal age criteria for transgender healthcare adolescents; the potential negative outcome of these minimal ages as recommendations in the US. Consequently, we have changes to the SOC 8 in this respect," an email from a WPATH member, apparently sent to Levine, stated.
WPATH's eighth edition of its standards of care, released in September 2022, had no age minimums for transgender procedures, according to the New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment