White House Opposes Surgeries for Trans Youth
The New York Times published an article claiming that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health at the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization, WPATH, to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for transgender minors.Levine, who is herself transgender, feared that listing age minimums for certain medical interventions — part of a larger effort by WPATH to update its guidelines — would spark backlash and empower opponents of transgender rights in arguing for across-the-board bans on gender-affirming care.
A draft version of the update to the care guidelines, obtained by The Associated Press, recommended that gender-affirming medical interventions could be started at earlier ages than those set forth by a previous version of the guidelines.Under the draft version, for instance, hormone replacement therapy could be recommended for individuals as young as 14, two years earlier than previously recommended.The draft guidelines also recommended that puberty blockers, which inhibit the development of secondary sex characteristics, could be started for individuals assigned female at birth from ages 8 to 13, and for individuals assigned male at birth from age 10 to 15.When the final WPATH “Standards of Care” were issued in 2022, they contained no specific age recommendations.
