Biden officials pressed Trans Medical Group to change guidelines for minors, court documents show

Newly released emails from an influential group issuing transgender medical guidelines indicate that U.S. health officials have been pushing to remove the minimum age for surgery in miners due to concerns about political fallout.

Biden administration health officials have pressed an international group of medical experts to remove age limits for teenage surgeries from the lines guidelines for the care of transgender minors, according to recently released court documents.

Officials feared that minimum ages could fuel growing political opposition to such treatment.

Excerpts from Emails from members of the Global Professional Association for Transgender Health recount how the staff of Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and herself a transgender woman, urged them to abandon the limits proposed in the group's guidelines and apparently succeeded. The question of whether and when adolescents should be allowed to undergo treatment and Transgender surgical procedures have become a raging debate within the political world. Opponents say adolescents are too young to make such decisions, but supporters, including a range of medical experts, say young people with gender dysphoria are at risk of depression and increasing distress if their problems are not addressed. resolved.

In the United States, setting age limits has been controversial from the start.

The draft guidelines, published at the end of 2021, recommended lowering the minimum age to 14 years for hormonal treatments. , 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentations or facial surgeries and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.

The proposed age limits were eliminated in the final guidelines describing standards of care. , raising concerns within the international group and among external experts as to why the age proposals had disappeared.

Email excerpts published this week shed light on possible reasons for these guideline changes. , and highlight Admiral Levine's role as the lead person on transgender issues within the Biden administration. The excerpts are documents filed in a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama's ban on gender-affirming care.

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