Biden Administration Confirms It Wants Taxpayers to Pay For Sex-Change Operations on Minors

The Biden administration supports using taxpayer dollars to fund sex-change operations on minors, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra confirmed in written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Education Labor on Nov. 29.

Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller questioned Becerra during an April hearing about the administration’s position on taxpayer funding for sex-change operations on minors. Becerra equivocated at the time, telling the congresswoman that the administration “will continue to comply with the law and provide people with the protections they need to get the medical services they are entitled to.”

In written answers to Miller, however, Becerra was more direct. He cited the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8, which provides an outline for physicians performing sex-change operations on minors.

“The Biden-Harris Administration supports the upcoming release of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8 and believes that all children and adults should be afforded life-saving, medically necessary care. Payers, both public and private, should cover treatments which medical experts have determined to be medically necessary,” the secretary wrote, in answers obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller.

Read the answers here:

WPATH 8 offers extensive guidance for physicians providing gender-related care, up to sex-change operations, for minors. Although the guidance admits that “the number of studies is still low, and there are few outcome studies that follow youth into adulthood,” it nevertheless recommends doctors consider placing patients on puberty blockers and other treatments that prepare them for more extensive surgical procedures.

“We recommend providers consider prescribing menstrual suppression agents for adolescents experiencing gender incongruence who may not desire testosterone therapy, who desire but have not yet begun testosterone therapy, or in conjunction with testosterone therapy for breakthrough bleeding,” the document instructs.

It also instructs doctors to wait until “the adolescent [has] had at least 12 months of gender-affirming hormone therapy or longer, if required, to achieve the desired surgical result for gender-affirming procedures, including breast augmentation, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, phalloplasty, metoidioplasty, and facial surgery” before operating.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on whether or not Becerra’s statement to Miller signals that the department reviewed all the named surgeries and supports taxpayers funding them for minors.

“Biden’s HHS Secretary has now confirmed that the Biden Administration is using taxpayer dollars to push young children to have sex change operations and take dangerous chemicals that do permanent damage to their bodies. The Biden Administration even supports allowing these procedures to occur without parental consent. American taxpayer dollars should never fund puberty blockers and sex change surgeries on minor children,” Miller said in a statement to the Daily Caller.

Biden confirmed during his 2020 presidential campaign that he supported funding sex-change operations through Obamacare, although he did not address covering the procedures for minors. His administration released guidance in March detailing its position on the issue, although the guidance did not address federal or state funding.

Dr. Rachel Levine, HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Health, is the highest-ranking transgender official in American history. In Levine’s previous position, Physician General in the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the pediatrician sought scientific literature to support “top” and “bottom” surgeries for minors.

“I’m not aware of existing literature but it is certainly happening,” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Gender Clinic co-founder Dr. Nadia Dowshen told Levine. “I think we’ve had more than 10 patients who have had chest surgery under 18 (as young as 15) and 1 bottom surgery (17).”

Reporting from The Daily Caller.

LATEST VIDEO