Lawmakers ask HHS if taxpayer money is going to transgender surgeries for minors

by Jacob Fuller

Vicky Arias, FISM News

 

The Subcommittee on Civil Rights & Civil Liberties sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week questioning the department on the government’s use of taxpayer money to fund transgender treatments for minors.

In the letter, ranking member of the subcommittee, Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), pressed the department on its use of “taxpayer funds to promote radical gender ideology and the medical transition of children using pharmaceutical or surgical interventions.”

Mace explained that “the Biden Administration appears to be encouraging any child, who does not conform to perceptions of masculine or feminine stereotypes, to alter his or her body through potentially irreversible medical or surgical intervention” and asked the government to provide “all documents and communications related to federal funds disbursed to any person or entity to perform gender-related medicine on children” from January 20, 2021, until the present time by “no later than November 8.”

In a press release from March, the White House stated that “it issued a letter to all state attorneys general reminding them of federal constitutional and statutory provisions that protect transgender youth against discrimination, including when those youth seek gender-affirming care.”

Even as the Biden Administration encourages “gender-affirming care” for minors, the U.K. recently announced plans to restrict treatments for minors who are seeking gender-altering drugs and surgeries. According to Fox News, the decision is based on the United Kingdom’s National Health Service’s determination that the majority of minors “claiming to be transgender may be going through a ‘transient phase.’”

“The clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist,” the United Kingdom’s National Health Service explained.

Studies have shown that in most cases, children “outgrow” gender dysphoria and gender confusion as they mature into adulthood.

The New York Post reported that “between 2009 and 2019, children being referred for transitioning treatment in the United Kingdom increased 1,000% among biological males and 4,400% among biological females. Meanwhile, the number of young people identifying as transgender in the U.S. has almost doubled since 2017, according to a new Centers for Disease Control & Prevention report.”

Rapid-onset gender dysphoria is also increasing. In a 2018 study in PLOS One, many parents “reported that, along with the sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria, their child either had an increase in their social media/internet use, belonged to a friend group in which one or multiple friends became transgender-identified during a similar timeframe, or both.”

Many stories of minors being influenced by social media have begun to circulate.

“I started being exposed to a lot of LGBT content and activism,” explained Chloe Cole, a 17-year-old detransitioner who underwent a double mastectomy but now rejects the transgender ideology. “I saw how trans people online got an overwhelming amount of support, and the amount of praise they were getting really spoke to me because, at the time, I didn’t really have a lot of friends of my own.’”

President Joe Biden explained last week that he disagrees with states’ rights to intervene in transgender policy, stating that he doesn’t think that “anybody should have the right to [restrict transgender treatments] as a moral question and as a legal question.”

In the meantime, many hope the report from the Health and Human Services department will shed light on whether taxpayer dollars are paying for minors’ transgender surgeries and treatments.

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