Levine: The ‘Wheels Will Turn’ on Gender Transitions for Minors

During a February discussion at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, transgender Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine said the “wheels will turn” on widely accepting transgender transitions for children.

Levine claimed “numerous peer reviewed journals” indicate that “there is nothing inherent with being transgender that predisposes youth to negative mental health outcomes.” Rather, he blamed the negative mental health outcomes of those struggling with gender dysphoria on “harassment,” “bullying” and “discrimination.”

“Transgender youth who are supported by their parents, school and community who receive evidence based standard of care treatment actually have excellent mental health outcomes,” Levine claimed, declaring that “gender-affirming” care — the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures to “affirm” an individual’s chosen gender — is “medical care,” “mental health care,” and “suicide prevention care.”

“I think that it’s not going to be politically advantageous. It wasn’t particularly in 2022. And so I think that as we look to all the different elections in 2024, I think the next two years are going to be challenging,” Levine said. “But I am positive and optimistic and hopeful that the wheel will turn after that and that this issue won’t be as politically and socially such a minefield.”

Levine’s remarks stand in sharp contrast to the determination made by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which actually found that these “treatments” — from cross-sex hormones to surgeries — are not “safe or effective” but fundamentally “experimental and investigational.”

“Studies presenting the benefits to mental health, including those claiming that the services prevent suicide, are either low or very low quality and rely on unreliable methods such as surveys and retrospective analyses, both of which are cross-sectional and highly biased,” the document, challenging the “science” of transgenderism, noted.

In addition, a study from the U.K. nonprofit Sex Matters found that gender-affirming “care” is not based science and that benefits are “no greater than a placebo effect.”