The White House Just Said What Anti-Trans Conservatives Have Been Longing For

AFP/Getty Images

In an abrupt reversal this week, the Biden administration confirmed its position that gender-affirming surgeries should be limited to adults, a major retreat from Democrats on transgender rights that has sparked an outcry from LGBTQ+ advocates in the U.S.

The White House first stated its position last week, in a brief statement to the New York Times and Fox News asserting the Biden administration does not support gender-affirming surgery for minors. Speaking to The 19th on Tuesday, a Biden spokesperson confirmed the administration’s stance, describing the surgeries as “deeply personal decisions” that “should be limited to adults.”

“We continue to support gender-affirming care for minors, which represents a continuum of care, and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors in these decisions,” the spokesperson added.

The administration’s about-face on medical rights came after news reports that Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health and the highest-ranking trans person in the Biden administration, lobbied the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to remove a list of proposed age minimums for specific surgeries from its updated guidelines on gender-affirming care. According to reports, Levine expressed concern that WPATH’s proposals to lower the minimum ages for gender-affirming medical care would lead to political backlash. WPATH’s organization’s current Standards of Care do not include recommended age minimums for such procedures, citing concerns of “creating or reinforcing arbitrary boundaries” that could inappropriately restrict access to care.

Right-wing news outlets including Fox News and The Daily Wire quickly pounced on the story, accusing Biden and Levine of pushing gender-affirming surgeries on children. The White House’s rejection of surgeries for minors was issued in response to those stories, the Times noted. According to recent research, gender-affirming surgeries for youth under 18 are vanishingly rare, and the few such procedures that do take place in the U.S. are almost always chest reduction procedures performed on cisgender boys — not trans minors.

Despite that marked discrepancy and the relative rarity of such procedures at all, conservatives have cultivated a moral panic on the topic of trans youth that has seemingly neutered the Democratic Party’s willingness to fight. Biden’s backpedaling is in stark contrast to his administration’s previous rhetoric on gender-affirming care, which he has defended and promoted on multiple occasions during his presidency, even calling anti-trans legislation “close to sinful” in the way it targets children. But aside from a handful of executive orders, Biden has offered little in the way of material support for his trans constituents since 2021, relying mostly on well-worn catchphrases.

One of Biden’s biggest accomplishments, a set of new Title IX rules this year protecting trans students, abandoned protections for trans student athletes — allegedly, because the topic of trans athletes was too politically volatile in an election year. That tactical move did not stop Republicans from filing suit against the new rules; a federal judge issued an injunction blocking them from being enforced in six states last month and that was extended to a total of 14 states this week.

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups rallied against the president’s statement this week, calling on Biden to make good on his promises to support and defend trans youth. The Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) called Biden’s statement “cowardly” and a “troubling concession” to Republicans in a press release Tuesday.

“Let’s be very, very clear: Government has no business inserting itself into private medical decisions that should be exclusively between patients, their providers, and the patients’ parent or guardian,” said Allison Scott, Director of Impact and Innovation at CSE. “It is dangerous to begin endorsing categorical bans or limits on healthcare, and there is no justification for restricting transgender youth’s access to the very same care that many cisgender youth receive every year — that’s literally the definition of discrimination. We demand the Biden Administration retract this thoughtless statement and work to undo its damage.”

The study dispels a well-worn anti-trans talking point about how healthcare providers treat gender dysphoria in kids.

The Human Rights Campaign pushed back on Biden’s retreat this week. “The Biden administration is flat wrong on this,” HRC president Kelley Robinson wrote in an emailed statement to press Tuesday night, saying conversations about surgery “belong between a patient, their family, and their health care provider,” not the government. Just a few days before, Robinson had called Biden “an ironclad champion for LGBTQ+ rights” and said his administration was “the most pro-equality Administration in history.”

Biden is not the only liberal leader to leap backward on trans rights this week. In the U.K., Labour Party leader Keir Starmer asserted that trans women “don’t have [the] right” to use women’s spaces like restrooms and claimed “biological women’s spaces need to be protected,” appearing to cede ground to the Conservative Party amid a firestorm of anti-trans sentiment in the country.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.

Originally Appeared on them.