BIDEN’S TRANSGENDER DECREE
One way to shut down debate on a contentious subject is to declare that there is no debate on the subject. Everyone, absolutely everyone, agrees with one side, so why are you even trying to argue? It’s settled.
The Biden administration is doing that now on what officials call “gender-affirming care” for young people who believe they are transgender. “There is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.
— about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care,” Dr. Rachel Levine, who, as U.S. assistant secretary for health, is the highest-ranking transgender person in the administration, told National Public Radio recently.
The Department of Health and Human Services released an information sheet on “gender-affirming care” for youth that listed four specific types of care, with a definition and comment on whether it was “reversible.” The first type of care was “social affirmation,” which it defined as “adopting gender-affirming hairstyles, clothing, name, gender pronouns, and restrooms and other facilities.” That can be done “at any age or state,” HHS said, and is “reversible.”
The department listed three other approved treatments that are not reversible — puberty blockers, hormone therapy and “gender-affirming surgeries.” The chart defined the first as “using certain types of hormones to pause pubertal development.” It called such treatment “reversible,” although there is great debate about that.
HHS defined hormone therapy as “testosterone hormones for those who were assigned female at birth” and “estrogen hormones for those who were assigned male at birth,” and labeled it “partially reversible.”
“Gender-affirming surgeries” were defined as “top” surgery or “bottom” or “facial feminization or other procedures.” Such measures are “typically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence” and are obviously “not reversible.”
Levine says there is “no argument” about the value and importance of these treatments. But just look at some of the commentary from an organization called the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, which is made up of the type of “medical professionals” to whom Levine referred. In the group’s own words, “We are an international group of over 100 clinicians and researchers concerned about the lack of quality evidence for the use of hormonal and surgical interventions as firstline treatment for young people with gender dysphoria.”
You might have seen more about the group, except members’ views are sometimes censored by major medical organizations. For example, last year The Wall Street Journal reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics barred the SEGM from setting up a booth at the AAP’s annual conference.
The AAP is “working very hard to give an appearance that everything’s been decided and there’s no debate,” a SEGM member, Dr. Julia Mason, told the Journal.
Levine has declared the argument among medical professionals over. Since the debate is over, since there is a scientific consensus in favor of “gender-affirming” treatment, those who are still criticizing are not debating the facts. They are attacking their fellow human beings.
“Those who now attack our LGBTQI+ community are … rejecting the value of supportive medicine, rejecting well-established science and rejecting basic human compassion. They prefer slander, bigotry and gender-baiting hate speech,” Levine said in the speech at Texas Christian University.
Who would want to risk being accused of slander, bigotry and gender-baiting — risk reputation and livelihood — for questioning the wisdom of “gender-affirming care” for minors? Better to just be quiet. After all, Levine says the argument is over, at least as long as Levine and the Biden administration are in power.