Supreme Court to weigh Tennessee ban on puberty blockers, transgender surgery for minors
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss the debate surrounding transgender health care for kids and what it could mean for other states with similar bans moving forward.
Adm. Rachel Levine — a transgender assistant secretary for health in the Biden administration — has long been among the most extreme of the gender extremists in American public life, but new documents reveal she’s even more fringe than we knew.
Levine got wind that World Professional Association for Transgender Health, itself a hardcore lefty advocacy group helping drive the current gender crisis in America, was going to (gasp!) set recommended age minimums for gender-based medical interventions in its 2022 guidance.
She came down like a hammer, reaching out through backchannels to interfere.
WPATH wanted a minimum age of 14 for hormone treatment, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation and 17 for genital surgeries.
BIDEN OFFICIALS PUSHED TO DROP AGE LIMIT ON TRANS SURGEREIS FOR MINORS: REPORT
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 25: Rachel Levine, nominee for Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee February 25, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Levine previously served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health (Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images)
Levine wanted no limits whatsoever … especially for the surgeries.
But why the backchannel outreach? She’s the face of Biden’s transgender policy posture, after all.
Per an email revealed in a recent court filing, Levine was "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."
In other words, if WPATH conceded an inch to medical reality, it might hurt Levine’s boss Joe Biden politically.
And WPATH, not shockingly, reportedly broke its own rules and defied the wishes of its own committee members to oblige this high-ranking and powerful government official (who plainly has the support of the president, or whoever makes decisions in this White House).
Remember: WPATH is, by any normal standard, about as far out there as it’s possible to get on trans issues.
The Babylon Bee was locked out of its popular Twitter account after the social media juggernaut accused the satirical site of violating its rules against "hateful conduct" over the joke naming U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine the satire site's "Man of the Year" for 2022. ((Joe Hermitt/The Patriot-News via AP, File))
Even as European nations and Britain have rightly turned away from the idea that kids should have a greased path to medical intervention for gender dysphoria — interventions that can have brutal lifelong effects, like infertility — WPATH stubbornly holds on.
Despite the heartbreaking testimony of brave detransitioners like Luka Hain and Chloe Cole, failed totally by the medical establishment.
But even that outfit was too moderate for Levine, and its minor gesture at sane policy had to be swept away to aid national Democrats.
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This is what results when you let fanatics literally living out their ideology effectively set policy on a truly difficult issue.
Extremists like Levine customarily claim that trans people are marginalized, at risk, oppressed by society, etc., so they must be given everything they want as soon as they ask for it no matter how nonsensical.
That concept then gets enshrined in policy and medical guidance and every other official posture.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Witness the fate of brave whistleblowers like Eithan Haim, the Texas surgeon now facing four felony charges for bringing to light the unethical and possibly illegal activities of doctors at America’s largest children’s hospital.
Or Jamie Reed, who was attacked by the ACLU for doing the same thing at a St. Louis gender clinic.
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No, the power is (for the moment) on Levine’s side as she maneuvers to sweep away all guardrails around protecting kids from medical disasters.
Which is precisely what makes the good fight against her and her brothers-in-arms so essential.
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