Biden Admin Official Pressured WPATH To Nix Age Limits On Sex-Change Procedures For Minors, Emails Reveal

• Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pressured the World Professional Association of Transgender Health to remove age limits from child sex-change procedures, court documents reveal.
• Emails show Levine feared that keeping the recommendations limiting the initiation of certain procedures “would make matters worse.”
• The American Academy of Pediatrics threatened to oppose a revision of the organization’s “Standards of Care” unless the age limits were removed.

A top Biden administration official pressured the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) to alter its guidelines for sex-change procedures, according to court documents from litigation in federal court involving Alabama’s restrictions on the procedures.

Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pushed WPATH to alter the recommendations in the organization’s “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8” (SOC 8), according to documents filed with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in Boe v. Marshall. Emails included with the filing indicate that Sarah Boatang, Levine’s chief of staff, urged WPATH to remove age limits from the procedures.

“Assistant Secretary Levine also attempted to and did influence the substantive content of SOC-8, based on political goals rather than science,” an appendix to a supplemental report prepared by Dr. James Cantor reads. “Specifically, Assistant Secretary Levine, through a staff member, pressured WPATH to remove recommended minimum ages for medical transition treatments from SOC-8.”

The organization had initially set ages of 14 for the use of hormone therapy, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for facial surgery and “breast augmentation” and 17 for castration, hysterectomies, and other procedures, according to a footnote in one of the filings.

“We sent the document to Admiral Levine . . . She like the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to health care for trans youth and maybe adults too. Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse,” an email quoted in the appendix says. “She asked us to remove them.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained footage from WPATH’s September 2022 Global Education Institute (GEI) and over 100 pages of documents which included some members of the group questioning the organization’s “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8” (SOC 8).

The videos included some of the instructors urging doctors to disregard a standard of care requiring that mental health issues be addressed before the start of any sex-change procedures, even for patients suffering from schizophrenia. Other videos discussed potentially grisly complications from some of the surgical procedures.

Pressure also came from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which threatened to oppose SOC-8 if WPATH did not delete the minimum age requirements.

“AAP issued an ultimatum to WPATH: Should WPATH not delete the age minimums, AAP would not only withhold endorsement of SOC-8, but would publicly oppose the document,” the appendix read. “As a result of this additional pressure, on top of that from Assistant Secretary Levine, WPATH capitulated and removed the text in violation of its own process despite the preference of its own committee members to retain the age limits.”

The AAP worked with WPATH in combatting legislation to restrict child sex change procedures, the DCNF reported.

“Discovery has revealed that WPATH: violated multiple international standards for the creation of clinical guidelines that WPATH itself claimed to follow in Standards of Care 8 (“SOC-8”); restricted the ability of SOC-8’s evidence review team to publish the systematic evidence reviews finding scant evidence for transitioning treatments; intentionally used SOC-8 as a political and legal document to increase coverage for transitioning treatments and advance WPATH’s political goals; caved to outside political pressure by Admiral Rachel Levine and others to remove age minimums for hormones and surgeries in SOC-8; and ‘muzzle[d]’ WPATH members who tried to inform the public of their concerns over pediatric transitioning treatments,” the Alabama Attorney General’s office wrote in a motion for summary judgment filed Wednesday.

The Department of Justice is seeking to exclude Cantor’s testimony from the proceedings in Boe v. Marshall.

“It is the position of the United States that any of Defendants’ expert opinions regarding surgery are irrelevant, that all of Defendants’ experts seek to opine on issues beyond their expertise, and that some of Defendants’ experts offer unreliable opinions that are not the product of a reliable methodology or lack an adequate factual basis,” the Justice Department claimed in the filing to exclude the testimony of Cantor and other experts.

“Rachel Levine and the Biden Administration ignored science and subjected children to life altering experimental medical treatments in the name of radical politics,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of Do No Harm said in a Thursday release. “Their unscientific pressure campaign against WPATH to remove age-based guidance for transgender surgeries that risked harming thousands of children. Do No Harm is calling on Levine to resign immediately, or be fired, for putting politics over patients.”

Levine, WPATH and the AAP did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the DCNF.