Senior Biden administration health officials pressured an international group of medical experts to remove age limit guidelines for transgender surgeries on minors, according to newly revealed court documents.
Email excerpts from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health document how Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine‘s staff pressed the organization to drop age requirements for minors to obtain gender transition surgeries in the group’s September 2022 Standards of Care update.
The documents were revealed as evidence from one of the multiple lawsuits lawsuits across the country regarding state-level bans on gender transition medical treatments for minors.
The emails were submitted as evidence in the Alabama case Boe v. Marshall by James Cantor, a psychologist and an outspoken critic of gender transition for minors.
One excerpt from an unnamed WPATH member recounts a conversation with Levine’s chief of staff, Sarah 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,” asking for the age limits to be removed from the final draft.
Several other emails document WPATH members discussing Levine’s suggestion that age limit recommendations be given in a “less visible” document and concern that delaying publication of the document was “proving a barrier to optimal policy progress.”
