HHS Secretary Becerra Affirms Support for Gender-Affirming Care
On Tuesday, April 25, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra waded into the nationwide policy debate around gender-affirming care for transgender Americans, releasing a statement affirming the Biden administration’s commitment to supporting and upholding the right to gender-affirming healthcare.
The statement was published in the form of a press release posted to the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It began thus: “At a time when our communities are facing true threats to their health and well-being – in the form of natural disasters, gun violence, and simply putting food on the table – some states and their elected officials have chosen to not focus on these issues but rather on a crisis of their own manufacturing.
“To date, we have seen at least a dozen states take steps to restrict access to gender-affirming treatment, primarily targeting trans youth, their families and caretakers, and their health care providers,” the statement continued. “These actions strip parents and guardians of their ability to make the most intimate of decisions and interfere with the independent medical judgement of health care providers. Most tragically, these actions send a message to our trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming youth that partisan politics matters more than their mental or physical health.”
Further, Secretary Becerra stated, “The Emergency Regulation issued by the Attorney General of Missouri on April 13, 2023, is an egregious attack on the bodily autonomy of transgender people and an unconscionable interference with the practice of medicine by dedicated and trained professionals. We must not lose sight of the humanity of the people impacted by these laws. We will continue to fight on behalf of all Americans to ensure they have access to the care and support they need.”
Secretary Becerra’s statement followed the April 13 announcement by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey that he was promulgating an emergency regulation to stop all gender-affirming care for minors. In making his announcement, Bailey stated in a press release that, “In an effort to protect children, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey promulgated an emergency regulation clarifying that, because gender transition interventions are experimental and have significant side effects, state law already prohibits performing those procedures in the absence of substantial guardrails that ensure informed consent and adequate access to mental health care. The emergency regulation follows the launch of an investigation by Attorney General Bailey into a St. Louis pediatric transgender center that has been accused by a whistleblower of using experimental drugs on children, distributing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without individualized assessment, and even giving children these life-altering drugs without parental consent. The regulation is necessary due to the skyrocketing number of gender transition interventions, despite rising concerns in the medical community that these interventions lack clinical evidence of safety or success.”
Bailey went on to state in the press release that “Medical organizations in both the United States and across Europe have recently emphasized the experimental nature of these interventions. The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recently determined that “[t]here is a lack of current evidence-based guidance for the care of children and adolescents who identify as transgender, particularly regarding the benefits and harms of pubertal suppression, medical affirmation with hormone therapy, and surgical affirmation.” And Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare recently declared that there is a “lack of reliable scientific evidence concerning the efficacy and the safety” of pubertal suppression and cross-sex hormone therapy and that “the risks” of these interventions “currently outweigh the possible benefits.”
