October 18, 2024
Officials in the justice department gave the green light to procedures in 2018 while Donald Trump was in the White House. Trump is running ads bashing Kamala Harris on the same surgeries.
The Trump administration signed off on sex-change surgeries for transgender prisoners, according to reports.
Officials in the justice department gave the green light to procedures that also included hormone therapy and hair removal in 2018 while Donald Trump was in the White House, the New York Times reports.
The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly attacked Kamala Harris for having previously supported sex changes for transgender inmates.
Prison bureau officials wrote in a budget memo to Congress in February 2018 that the government was obligated to pay for sex-change procedures if deemed medically necessary.
“Transgender offenders may require individual counselling and emotional support,” they said.
“Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualised assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).”
However, a long-running legal battle delayed the first such operation until 2022, after Trump had left office.
Ms Harris accused Trump of hypocrisy when questioned on her former support for the policy in a Fox News interview on Wednesday evening.
“I will follow the law and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said.
“Under Donald Trump’s administration these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis to people in the federal prison system.”
She said a Trump campaign advert attacking her for supporting the procedures was “throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house”, adding: “You’ve got to take [responsibility] for what happened in your administration.”
The Trump campaign hit back following the interview, accusing the vice president of “lying” and noting that the first sex-change surgery of a federal inmate occurred in 2022 under Ms Harris.
The 2018 memo from Trump officials reflected guidelines issued in the final weeks of Barack Obama’s administration the previous year.
The Trump administration created a higher barrier to taxpayer-funded surgeries by adding the word “necessary” to treatment guidelines, the New York Times noted.
In 2022, a federal court in Illinois approved a sex-change surgery for Cristina Nichole Iglesias, following a long running battle with the prisons bureau which repeatedly denied her requests.
“In the settlement agreement, [the prisons bureau] confirmed that it has never before provided any gender-affirming surgery to an individual in federal custody,” the American Civil Liberties Union said.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly hammered Ms Harris on transgender issues, with attack adverts often concluding with the slogan: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The vice president, who has abandoned several of her former policy positions, said in 2019 that she would use executive authority to ensure transgender prisoners had access to necessary surgeries.
