CNN —
Former President Donald Trump continues to repeat the lie that U.S. schools are sending children to gender reassignment surgery without parental consent, but his own presidential campaign has not reported any such cases. Even though it has never been found.
Trump debuted the story in late August. In early September, CNN and others debunked that mistake. But President Trump, whose campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on late-campaign attack ads related to transgender people, revived the topic in October as Election Day approached.
President Trump made the assertion again last week while discussing education policy during a debate at a New York City barbershop filmed by Fox News. Return the girl. Understood? without parental consent. “At first, when I was told that that was actually happening, I said, “That’s an exaggeration.” No: It happens. It happens. There are places where it happens. ”
Trump did not name these supposed “regions.” But during a Friday interview with noted podcast host Joe Rogan, he made his claims again. To a man — to a woman — without parental consent. ”
Facts First: President Trump’s claims remain false. There is no evidence that schools in any region of the United States send children to gender reassignment surgeries without parental approval or perform unauthorized gender reassignment surgeries on-site. None of that is “allowed” anywhere in the country. Even in states where gender reassignment surgery is legal for persons under 18, minors must have parental consent to undergo such surgery.
The Trump campaign and four conservative groups were contacted by CNN in September about Trump’s claims, but found no evidence of them. Medical experts for transgender people say the situation described by President Trump has no place in this country.
Landon Hughes, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of a recent study on the prevalence of gender reassignment surgery in the United States, said in an email in September: Access to surgeries and surgeries from schools. Hughes added, “No health care provider in the United States will perform surgery on a minor under the direction of the school, let alone without parental consent.”
“Of course, everything in this statement is false,” Dr. Meredith McNamara, an adolescent medicine physician at Yale University School of Medicine, said in a September email. “Of course, any type of surgery is performed at a qualified medical center, not at a school. Of course, parents are the medical decision makers for their children, especially when it comes to gender-affirming care.”
In the United States, nonsurgical gender-affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy also require parental consent for minors. Various guidelines and standards for medical care for transgender adolescents, from organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, state that parental consent is required.
“Gender-affirming medical and surgical treatments legally require parental/legal guardian consent and the consent of youth under 18 years of age,” said Laura, medical director of the Gender-affirming Medical Program at the University of Wisconsin.・Dr. Taylor said. Southern California said in a September email. “This includes puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.”
There are no hard national figures on the number of minors undergoing gender reassignment surgery (such as breast or chest surgery, often referred to as “top surgery”, or genital reconstruction surgery, often referred to as “bottom surgery”). However, limited data available indicate that the majority of such surgeries are performed in adults.
Mr Taylor outlined the lengthy process by which minors undergo gender reassignment surgery.
“For adolescents, the decision to start hormones or to have surgery is made after consultation with a multidisciplinary team for a psychosocial evaluation,” she said in bold type. “Assessment includes understanding the discomfort associated with gender nonconformity (distress caused by physical characteristics that do not match the person’s identity), how long it has been present, and other factors that explain the discomfort. This includes excluding reasons and confirming the adolescent’s gender dysphoria.The family can provide informed consent.”
Asked in September for evidence of President Trump’s claims that schools are secretly performing gender reassignment surgeries on children, Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt had no answer. Instead, she sent a series of articles about the broader debate about how schools handle issues of gender identity.
