Post-America may be rethinking the mutilation of kids

 I'm basically just going to cede the floor here to Wesley J. Smith at National Review. In fact, there's a third layer, as he excerpts considerably from a New York Times story. 

(I've been asked what the principle difference is between LITD and Precipice.  Precipice is for essays, a canvas for working out thought processes about topics of permanent relevance. LITD allows me to address matters currently on the nation's and world's plate. There's a more generous degree of linking and excerpting here.)

Anyway, what Smith reports on is such encouraging news I have to see that it gets a dissemination boost:

The Biden administration has long insisted that “gender-affirming care” in minors is “safe” and “medically necessary” medical treatment. This, despite several European countries going in just the opposite direction.

Then, it was discovered that out that assistant secretary of Health and Human Services Admiral Rachel Levine — who is transgender and a radical on the issue — influenced WPATH, the ideological “medical association,” to do away with all age limitations in its GAC standard of care guidelines regarding puberty blockers, surgeries, and other interventions. What a scandal!

With that undue influence cigar exploding in the administration’s face, it has now backed away from its support for gender-affirming surgeries on minors. From the New York Times story:

The Biden administration said this week that it opposed gender-affirming surgery for minors, the most explicit statement to date on the subject from a president who has been a staunch supporter of transgender rights.

The White House announcement was sent to The New York Times on Wednesday in response to an article reporting that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for minors.

The draft guidelines would have lowered the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. The final guidelines, released in 2022, removed the age-based recommendations altogether.

“Adm. Levine shared her view with her staff that publishing the proposed lower ages for gender transition surgeries was not supported by science or research, and could lead to an onslaught of attacks on the transgender community,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in a statement on Friday evening . . .

The administration, which has been supportive of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, expressed opposition only to surgeries for minors, not other treatments. The procedures are usually irreversible, critics have said.

“Usually irreversible, critics have said“? Good grief, is there any questions that mastectomies — performed on hundreds of minors each year! — are irreversible? So are facial reconstructions and Adam’s apple shaving — all also performed on minors! So are genital-refashioning mutilations, done less frequently on people under 18, but still done.

One way or another the divinely crafted architecture of the universe will have the final say over human attempts at taking over the crafting function.