A major transgender health organization used by many children’s hospitals to craft their medical policies will soon recommend “transgender reassignment surgery” – including non-medically necessary mastectomies, hysterectomies, and castrations – for underage children as young as 15.
According to Fox News, which cited the Associated Press, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in its newest Standards of Care guidelines “will lower its age recommendations for breast removal to 15 years old, and genital surgery, including womb and testicle removal, to 17 years old – a year earlier than its previous guidance, the Associated Press reported in June, citing an unreleased draft of the new guidance.”
The group's previous Standards of Care guidelines, a "version 7" published in 2011, recommended that genital gender reassignment surgery, known as “bottom surgery,” not be performed on any patient younger than 18, although it did state that voluntary mastectomies (known as “top surgeries) should be performed on teen girls as young as 17.
The old guidelines had also advised surgeries only be performed on patients who had lived at least one year under their new gender “identity.”
Related: Children's Hospital Worker Admits Facility Performed 'Gender-Affirming' Hysterectomies on Children
But under the new guidance, permanently disfiguring hysterectomies and castrations are now recommended for patients as young as 17, while non-medically indicated breast removals can be performed on girls as young as 15 years old – well before they've attained legal adulthood, and a full year before most states allow them to drive a car on their own.
Hospitals including Seattle Children’s, Boston Children’s, the Youth Gender Program at the University of Florida, and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health in California use WPATH’s guidance in designing their standards of care for patients.
Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. recently came under fire after a hospital employee was recorded claiming the hospital has performed voluntary hysterectomies on teenage girls, a statement the hospital has denied.