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.
Adm. 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.
WPATH guidance recommended age minimums of 14 for hormone treatment, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation and 17 for genital surgeries.
“We sent the document to Admiral Levine … She like[s] the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) 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.
In another excerpt, a WPATH member recounts a conversation Levine’s chief of staff, Sarah Boateng, and notes that “She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out” on the proposed guidelines.
WPATH appears to have caved to the Biden administration’s pressure.
“[W]e heard your [Levine’s] 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.
The international group “capitulated and removed the text in violation of its own process despite the preference of its own committee members to retain the age limits” after the pressure campaign, Cantor stated in the filing.
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.
The Post has reached out to HHS and WPATH for comment.