The highest-ranking transgender person in the Biden administration, who is also a pediatrician, claimed, “There is no argument among medical professionals … about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”
Speaking to National Public Radio, Admiral Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, used the opportunity to attack Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladopo, an ally of Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis. Levine accused Ladopo of putting out “a statement based upon political considerations that is not appropriate.”
Ladopo had released a fact sheet on April 20 that stated it would “clarify evidence recently cited on a fact sheet released by the US Department of Health and Human Services.” Ladopo wrote, ”Systematic reviews on hormonal treatment for young people show a trend of low-quality evidence, small sample sizes, and medium to high risk of bias.”
The HHS fact sheet to which Ladopo referred stated, “For transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender- affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the healthcare system.”
The fact sheet offered examples of “gender-affirming care” including, “Using certain types of hormones to pause pubertal development,” giving “Testosterone hormones for those who were assigned female at birth,” and “estrogen hormones for those who were assigned male at birth,” “’Top’ surgery – to create male-typical chest shape or enhance breasts,” and “’Bottom’ surgery – surgery on genitals or reproductive organs.”
The Florida Department of Health fact sheet noted evidence claiming that most children , who identified with their non-birth sex eventually reverted to believing their birth sex was correct. That fact sheet reported, “A paper published in the International Review of Psychiatry states that 80% of those seeking clinical care will lose their desire to identify with the non-birth sex.”
In January 2021, the news website of the Christian organization Focus on the Family was suspended from its Twitter account for saying that Levine was a biological male.
The Daily Citizen had written, “On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of HHS. Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman.”
In March 2022, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted a screenshot of a USA Today article naming Levine as one of its “Women of the Year,” then tweeted, “Rachel Levine is a man.” Twitter flagged the tweet as being “hateful.” Days later, the satiric website The Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter after naming Levine its “Man of the Year.”
The Babylon Bee article stated, “Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman. He is also an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. What a boss! … Rachel’s message is to ‘be true to yourself,’ and we couldn’t agree more. This man is breaking barriers and showing us all the true meaning of courage.”
Elon Musk, a fan of The Babylon Bee, contacted the Bee’s CEP Seth Dillon after its suspension, and reportedly told Dillon “that he might need to buy Twitter.”