By Dr. Christopher Schorr
AFPI
An explosive increase in gender confusion threatens the health and well-being of American children. This confusion is driven, in part, by politicians like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The Biden-Harris Administration reinterpreted Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination, extending these protections to cover subjective gender identities (Pidluzny, 2023b). This action effectively forces schools to institutionalize the unscientific notion that sex and gender are wholly separate and independently varying phenomena (Hardin, 2023).
On such grounds, Biden and Harris have weaponized federal funding to compel K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ sports and intimate facilities (Harper, 2022). As governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz followed a similar path, earning the nickname “Tampon Tim” for using taxpayer funds to install tampon and menstrual pad dispensers in boys’ restrooms in K-12 schools (Zilber, 2024).
Biden, Harris, and Walz have directed their respective agencies to aggressively promote dangerous and irreversible gender transition procedures and surgeries for minor children (OASH, 2023; DHS, 2023). Biden and Harris are fighting to prevent states from protecting children from these medical abominations, while in Minnesota, Walz champions a “sanctuary state for child sex changes” (Downey, 2024; Attorney General of Texas, 2024). Biden, Harris, and Walz are thus working diligently to construct both ends of the “school-to-clinic pipeline” (Sapir, 2022). Their policies harm vulnerable young people—first, by encouraging gender confusion and second, by directing confused children toward barbaric medical interventions that leave them mutilated, sterile, and chronically medicated (SEGM, 2021).
1. Childhood gender confusion and gender transition procedures are increasing in tandem.
In 2022, more than 300,000 American children aged 13–17 identified as “transgender” (Herman et al., 2022). Among children aged 6–17, new diagnoses for gender dysphoria increased 178 percent (15,172–42,167) in just five years (2017–2021), according to a Reuters report. Gender transition therapies for children likewise surged during this period:
- Initial puberty blocker prescriptions increased from 633 in 2017 to 1,390 in 2021 (+120%).
- Initial cross-sex hormone prescriptions increased from 1,905 in 2017 to 4,231 in 2021 (+122%).
- “Top surgeries,” i.e., breast implantation or removals, increased from 238 in 2017 to 282 in 2021 (+18%) (Respaut & Terhune, 2022).
Remarkably, publicly available data suggest growth in all four categories accelerated during the first year of the Biden-Harris Administration (See figure above). Another study that scoured the national insurance database found “evidence of 5,288 to 6,294 ‘gender-affirming’ double mastectomies for girls under age 18” between 2017 and 2023, with annual counts peaking at more than 1,000 in both 2021 and 2022 (Sapir, 2024). With the caveat that correlation does not prove causation, Biden-Harris policies are clearly associated with both the identity confusion underlying the transgender social contagion and the promotion of gender transition therapies and surgeries to children.
2. Biden, Harris, and Walz Support Gender Transition Procedures for Minor Children
According to a Health and Human Services fact sheet from the Biden-Harris Administration, gender transition therapies and surgeries for minor children include the following:
- Puberty blockers: hormones that pause normal pubertal development.
- Cross-sex hormones: testosterone for girls and estrogen for boys.
- Sex-change surgeries: facial surgeries, “top surgeries” removing or implanting breasts, and “bottom” surgeries that refashion genitals and reproductive organs (OASH, 2023).
Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are associated with a host of side effects, including reduced bone density, stunted growth, infertility, blood clots, and cancer (Overton & Campana, 2023; SEGM, 2021). They are typically prescribed to children “off-label” for purposes not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (Attorney General of Texas, 2021). The physical changes these therapies produce—for example, hair loss or growth, voice changes, and infertility—are often permanent (NHS, 2020).
Surgeries are likewise life-altering and permanent. Girls who undergo mastectomies will never nurse children. Boys who take puberty blockers or estrogen compromise their sexual function and reduce their chances of fathering children. Each of the following has taken place in the U.S.:
- Top surgeries have been performed on children as young as 12.
- Cross-sex hormones have been prescribed to children as young as 13.
- Puberty blockers have been prescribed to children as young as eight (Do No Harm, 2023).
The Biden-Harris Administration aggressively champions these gender transition procedures for children, including surgeries (OASH, 2023; Arnold, 2024), while ignoring the following:
- The documented harms these procedures cause (Reed, 2023).
- Testimonies from detransitioners on unethical practices at gender clinics (Block, 2024).
- Other developed countries (e.g., Sweden and the United Kingdom) have moved to restrict access to such procedures after careful scientific study (Davis, 2022).
- The obvious discrepancy of administering irreversible medical interventions to children—at times without parental consent—despite scientific evidence that 80% of cases of gender identity disorders in children and adolescents do not persist into adulthood (Korte et al, 2008).
In May of 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration issued a new rule under the Affordable Care Act to strip access to all federal healthcare funds, including Medicare and Medicaid, from healthcare providers who refuse to perform gender transition procedures on children (Attorney General of Texas, 2024). The Biden-Harris rule also purports to preempt laws enacted in the majority of U.S. states to protect their children from this medical barbarism (OCR, 2022; Liberty Counsel, 2024).
Remarkably, a few states have taken the opposite course. Of these, Minnesota is perhaps the worst offender. As governor, Tim Walz signed legislation making Minnesota a “sanctuary state for child sex changes” (Downey, 2024). Consequently, Minnesota courts and officials are prohibited from complying with child removal requests from neighboring states in cases where a parent is attempting to protect his or her child from gender transition procedures administered in Minnesota. Walz has even advocated amending Minnesota’s constitution to create a right to gender transition procedures (Ferguson, 2024).
Walz also led efforts to force health insurers and providers to cover gender transition procedures for children (Richardson & Brock, 2024). He signed an executive order directing his state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to increase access to these procedures (E.O. 23-03, 2023). His DHS subsequently removed most age restrictions from gender transition therapies and procedures and threatened to take legal action against insurance companies and medical centers that refused to follow its revised guidance (DHS, 2023).
Finally, as if his anti-child bona fides were in doubt, Walz signed legislation that removed anti-pedophilia language from the Minnesota Human Rights Act (Minnesota HF 1655, 2023). The offending language, excised by the “Take Pride Act,” had clarified that “physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult” was not a protected category of “sexual orientation” under Minnesota law.
3. Biden, Harris, and Walz Push Gender Confusion in K-12 Schools
The Biden-Harris Administration has leveraged the immense power of the federal leviathan to foment gender confusion in K-12 schools. On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order reinterpreting Title IX prohibitions on sex discrimination to extend sex-based protections to subjective gender identity (E.O. 13988, 2021; Pidluzny, 2023b). To force compliance with this radical agenda, Biden and Harris threatened to withdraw school lunch funding from non-compliant schools (Harper, 2022).
The Department of Education’s Title IX rule—blocked by federal courts in 26 states—forces schools to open female sports and intimate facilities to natal males who claim a female gender identity (Olohan, 2024). As a result, school-aged girls and young women are more susceptible to being:
- exposed to male nudity in school locker rooms (Impelli, 2023);
- sexually assaulted by male students in school bathrooms (Downey, 2022);
- seriously injured and even paralyzed competing against boys in school sports (Andrews, 2024);
- denied equal access to scholarships and awards due to competing against boys (Schlott, 2023).
Biden and Harris have also attacked efforts to excise radical gender ideology from K-12 schools, and they have sicced the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights on K-12 school boards for deliberating about removing sexually explicit and obviously age-inappropriate materials from public school libraries (Pidluzny, 2023a).
As governor of Minnesota, Walz supported changes to K-12 school curricula to instruct children to “repudiate forms of power and oppression,” including “cisheteropatriarchy.” He fought to allow male students into female sports. Walz’s enthusiasm for boys entering girls’ restrooms (and vice versa) evidently knows no bounds: He recently signed legislation providing state-funded tampons and menstrual pad dispensers in boys’ restrooms (Greene & Bedrick, 2024).
Conclusion: What Can We Expect from a Harris-Walz Administration?
A Harris-Walz Administration can be expected to continue to push radical policies that funnel children through the school-to-clinic pipeline—causing irreversible physical damage to many of them. Neither Harris nor Walz have given any indication that they intend to moderate their positions on these issues.
Moreover, in selecting Tim Walz as her running mate in place of a more moderate alternative, Kamala Harris has signaled her intention to pursue an even more radical liberal agenda than the one she pursued in the Biden-Harris Administration (Bratrud, 2024).
