A new directive from Attorney General Pam Bondi calls for enforcing the laws on the books against medically and surgically mutilating confused children, while also giving victims irreparably harmed by such practices a means by which to receive justice and restitution.
Last week Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memorandum, entitled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children,” that instructs the Department of Justice (DOJ) to take steps to end the practice of medical and surgical gender transitions in children.
Bondi began the memo by detailing the issue of a rapid increase in children seeking gender transition procedures and laid the blame at the feet of parties such as Hollywood, liberal politicians, the media, and “politically-captured academics.”
“There is a radical ideological agenda being pushed throughout every aspect of American life-from TV programming and Hollywood film production to children’s books and elementary school classrooms-that teaches children to deny biological reality,” she stated. “Gender ideology, masked as science, teaches that children should process adolescent stress and confusion as a case of mistaken identity and that the solution is not to root out and eliminate the underlying condition but to acquiesce in it permanently through life-altering chemical and surgical intervention.”
Bondi added, “Dissenting voices are bullied into silence, and ‘allies’ are praised and rewarded. Tragic and absurd as it is that 1.4% of 13- to 17-year-olds now identify as transgender, that is the predictable result of a coordinated, unchecked ideological attack on America’s children.”
Bondi cited the medical community’s reliance on “junk science,” such as the fully discredited World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines that were found to ignore the harmful effects of gender transitions and were politically motivated.
Bondi also noted the Biden Administration’s pushing of child gender transitions and attempt to change the already critically flawed WPATH guidelines to eliminate age minimums for gender transition surgeries.
This comes after President Trump issued an executive order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” which reversed gender-affirming policies implemented by the Biden administration. In response to that directive, Bondi issued guidance to DOJ employees on how “to enforce rigorous protections and hold accountable those who prey on vulnerable children and their parents.”
Bondi listed five key aspects of the Department of Justice’s approach to eliminating child gender transitions.
First, she stated that the DOJ would enforce federal laws prohibiting female genital mutilation, targeting those who perform procedures altering sex organs under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”
Female genital mutilation, which includes double mastectomies, like that performed on Chloe Cole when she was 15 years old, is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
“The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while doctors, motivated by ideology, profits, or both, exploit and mutilate our children. Under my watch, the Department will act decisively to protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of care,” Bondi promised.
Second, Bondi said the DOJ will investigate violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the False Claims Act.
The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits false claims by manufacturers or distributors regarding the usage of on- or off-label drugs. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically prohibits the off-label use of hormones. Moreover, puberty blockers have not been approved by the FDA for treating gender dysphoria, and their use in so-called gender-affirming care violates this prohibition.
Under the False Claims Act, it is illegal to bill insurance for a procedure that is covered by insurance while performing another procedure. Some doctors who prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones or perform gender transition surgeries use incorrect billing codes to either skirt state laws banning gender transitions in children or to ensure that insurance will cover the procedures.
Third, the DOJ has instructed employees not to rely on the WPATH guidelines and to withdraw any court filings that rely on the guidelines.
Bondi argued,
“WPATH has flouted basic standards for clinical guidelines, silenced its own evidence review team to bury doubts about the science WPATH promotes, muzzled dissenting members, and worked with the prior administration to push reckless policies-like doing away with age minimums for child surgeries. That is not science; it is radical ideology that endangers children with untested theories, and it has no place in the Department’s work. WPATH’s guidelines are fundamentally flawed and unreliable, and the Department will not use them in any way that suggests otherwise.”
The current DOJ has already acted on this direction by withdrawing its interest in the case of Doe v. v. Georgia Department of Corrections. In that case, the Biden DOJ sought to require Georgia to use taxpayer dollars to fund the gender transition procedures of an inmate under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). By contrast, the Trump DOJ has now filed a statement in a separate but similar case known as Fuller v. Georgia Department of Corrections, reaffirming that the ADA was not passed to give transgender inmates a right to surgeries and experimental treatment.
As Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon explained,
“The prior administration’s arguments in transgender inmate cases were based on junk science. There has never been an Eighth Amendment right for inmates to demand elective and experimental surgeries. States’ limited resources need not be wasted to provide these dubious surgeries to inmates.”
Fourth, Bondi said she is forming the Attorney General’s Coalition Against Child Mutilation, which will be comprised of state attorneys general seeking to promote the prosecution of medical professionals who violate laws banning child gender transitions.
Finally, Bondi is seeking to work with Congress to draft legislation that would create a private right of action for children harmed by gender transitions, enabling their parents to file suit against medical professionals who facilitated the procedures. The legislation would have a lengthy statute of limitations and retroactive liability to ensure doctors are punished.
It is long past time that those who profit off the destruction of children’s minds and bodies or who use children as part of their ideological crusade are held accountable.
At every turn, studies prove the harms of gender transitions. Many times over doctors, politicians, and hospitals hid those harms to push gender ideology. Many children were confused by transgender influencers or teachers at school, sought help, and were put on the path to gender transition. Children are not able to understand the consequences of such a life-changing choice — and yet they are the ones who must live with the pain, regret, side effects, and potential sterility for the rest of their lives.
Numerous parents have been manipulated into putting their child through these procedures because a therapist or doctor lied by suggesting that their child would commit suicide if they weren’t put on an immediate course of medicalization and surgery. Detransitioner Chloe Cole has testified repeatedly that her parents resisted putting her on puberty blockers and cross-hormone drugs — until doctors took a fear-mongering tact by asking: “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?”
This is clearly unethical, but even more horrifying is that studies show that gender transitions actually increase the risk of suicide.
It’s time for those children and their parents to receive some measure of restitution for the irreparable harms that these profiteers and idealogues have caused them.
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