Transgender Deputy Health Secretary Rachel Levine said gender-affirming care for minors has the “highest support” from the Biden administration.
Levine promised medical sex reassignment of children would soon be normalized, praising the controversial medical procedure that was banned in several states during the pediatric session at Hartford Children’s Medical Center.
Levine was invited to speak at the event about the Parental Rights in Education Act in Florida and the policy implications of gender reassignment surgery taking place in children’s hospitals.
“I think it will not be politically advantageous. It wasn’t particularly in 2022 and so I think looking at all the different elections in 2024, I think the next two years are going to be tough,’ Levine said.
Deputy Transgender Health Secretary Rachel Levine says gender-affirming care for minors has ‘highest support’ from Biden administration
“But I am positive and optimistic and I hope the wheel will turn after this and this issue will not be so politically and socially such a minefield.”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of the Do No Harm organization, a national association of medical professionals that fights “woke” activism in the health care system, told Fox News that there was “no strong evidence to back up these claims.
“Levine’s appearance at Connecticut Children’s Hospital praising ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors and claiming they will be fully embraced is false and needs to be countered,” Goldfarb said.
“There is no strong evidence that children treated with gender hormones or puberty blockers improved mental health ratings.”
A recent study from the University of Washington showed no change in the psychological well-being of miners, Goldfarb added.
“There can be irrevocable harm done to children by those who push for these radical, ideologically motivated treatments,” he said.
“Treatment of minors must be based on rigorous scientific investigation, not dubious, agenda-driven studies or activist demands.”
Representative Andy Harris, a member of the House Doctors Caucus and co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus, said Levine’s comments were “reprehensible.”
“It is reprehensible for any government official, let alone the US Deputy Secretary of HHS, to promote the genital mutilation of minors as becoming common practice in the United States,” he said.
“As a physician, I was proud to co-sponsor the ‘Protect Children’s Innocence Act’ which would ban harmful medical procedures used to treat gender dysphoria in transgender minors, including puberty blockers and surgeries in which minors alter their bodies to match a sex that differs from their biological sex.
He added: “Many paediatricians, especially pediatric endocrinologists, have expressed serious concerns about the use of puberty blockers, hormone blockers and gender transition surgeries in minors.
“These doctors know that these drugs and procedures can impact bone growth, fertility, and the risk of breast and prostate cancer in children.
“Meanwhile, HHS has pressured providers to provide this care or they will face discrimination lawsuits. We must protect our children.
The comments come after US President Joe Biden slammed unnamed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, calling the state’s actions towards transgender youth “almost guilty”.
Florida medical boards voted in November to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender-affirming surgeries in children.
This follows a parental rights bill the governor signed earlier in the year barring teachers from giving classroom lessons on kindergarten ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity’. in the third year.
Levine said: The children you serve, the youth you serve, the families and all of you as their providers have the support at the highest level of the federal government President Biden has your back’
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who could announce a presidential run any day, is leading a series of laws that would prevent minors from receiving transgender health care and surgeries.
Biden attacked Florida’s response to transgender youth issues in an interview with former Obama aide Kal Penn on “The Daily Show.”
“It’s just terrible what they’re doing,” Biden said in the video.
“It’s not like, you know, a kid wakes up one morning and says, you know, I’ve decided I want to be a man, or I want to be a woman. I mean, what are they thinking ?
“What is happening in Florida is, as my mother would say, bordering on sinful. I mean, it’s just terrible what they do.
But the DeSantis Florida Health Administration pushed back on Biden’s comments.
Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida told DailyMail.com that the federal government pushing people with gender dysmorphia to have surgeries when they were underage is the real “sin” and “decades behind other developed countries”.
The president’s attack on DeSantis and initiatives in his state are in preparation for a one-on-one presidential election with the governor who has yet to announce a White House bid but is expected to enter the primary in GOP in a few months.
Florida Health Care Agency Secretary of Administration Jason Weida (pictured) told DailyMail.com that the government pushing young people with gender dysmorphia to have surgery is a ‘sin’ and ‘decades of lagging behind other developed countries”
“It’s not ‘a sin’ to ban mutilation of minors,” DeSantis tweeted on Tuesday.
“It is not acceptable for the federal government to require that procedures such as sex reassignment operations be permitted for children.”
Republican lawmakers in Florida have introduced several bills this session that activists say are regressive and will disenfranchise members of the LGBTQ community.
“The ‘gender affirmation’ model pushed by the Biden administration is decades behind other developed countries, including Sweden and more recently Norway,” Weida told DailyMail.com.
“What is ‘sinful’ is the establishment pushing harmful surgeries and treatments with long term effects on minors without accountability or transparency.”
Opponents of the bill in the Sunshine State say the governor is using the pretense of education and parental rights to implement laws they deem anti-gay and anti-transgender.
A bill, for example, would ban transgender surgeries and health care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for children who say they are of the opposite sex they were born into.
Weida said Florida’s new laws are consistent with what was found after the state Agency for Health Care Administration conducted a 2022 review of services promoted by Biden and the federal government for treat gender dysmorphia in minors.
“Last year, the Agency conducted an extensive review of several federally promoted services to treat gender dysphoria and found that these services – sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers – do not meet widely accepted professional medical standards and are investigational and investigational with the potential for long-term harmful effects,” he said.
Biden tells Daily Show guest host Kal Penn that Florida’s LGBTQ rights laws are ‘sinful’ and ‘cruel’
DeSantis released his memoir “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival” last month and is currently on a book tour that many consider a pre-presidential candidacy announcement trip across the states.
The book and priorities of Florida’s current legislative sessions are seen primarily as a platform on which DeSantis would campaign once he launches a 2024 bid for the GOP nomination.
The Parental Rights in Education Act, which the governor signed into law last year, has been dubbed by critics the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill – because it blocked educators from including in their school curriculum discussions about gender identity or sexual orientation.
The law currently includes children in kindergarten through third grade, but the Florida legislature is now considering expanding it to include minors through eighth grade.
