Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, are calling for the firing of four Department of Defense (DOD)-affiliated doctors who appeared to advocate for sex-change procedures for children as young as seven years old.
Drs. David Klein, Thomas Baxter and Natasha Schvey are all physicians at Travis Air Force Base in California, while Dr. Noelle Larson works at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The four wrote in an article for the American Journal of Public Health that “children can begin participating in their medical decision-making as early as age seven years” and that “youths … have an inherent ability and right” to hormones and sex-change operations. The doctors add that providing hormones and sex-change operations for minors can improve force readiness, so military doctors should be trained in the field.
“If DOD advocates for the chemical castration of 7–year–old children to further a radical leftwing political agenda, we lose our moral standing in the world. The nations and people caught in the middle of the 21st Century struggle between American dominance or Chinese dominance will view us as morally lost,” Miller, Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger and Texas Rep. Brian Babin write to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller.
Read the letter here:
Sec. Austin Letter 3.28.23[Final] by Michael Ginsberg on Scribd
Klein did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment. Schvey redirected a request for comment to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences media affairs officer, who did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment. Baxter and Larson could not be reached for comment.
“The U.S. military is the greatest force for good in the history of the world. The Pentagon should immediately fire any ‘doctor’ who recommends chemically castrating a 7-year-old child to advance a political ideology, which is evil,” Miller said in a statement to the Daily Caller.
Biden administration officials, most notably in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have advocated for the use of taxpayer dollars to fund sex-change operations. Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at HHS, has argued insurance companies that refuse to fund such procedures illegally discriminate on the basis of sex. As Physician General of Pennsylvania, Levine sought out scientific literature supporting “bottom surgery” for minors, but a top doctor was “not aware of existing literature.”
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has explained the Biden administration views hormones and sex-change operations as “life-saving” and “medically necessary.” He told Miller in a March letter that hormones and puberty blockers are “medically necessary” and “safe,” ignoring FDA guidance noting that blockers may cause fluid buildup in the skull.
“It is incredibly disappointing to hear that Department of Defense personnel are advocating for the chemical castration of our children,” Harshbarger added. “Our armed forces must be focused on the threat our adversaries pose and the defense of our nation, not radical gender ideologies. By embracing a woke agenda, the DoD is abandoning its core mission at a time when American global dominance is under attack.”