Fact check: Trump revives his lie that schools are secretly sending children for gender-affirming surgeries
Former President Donald Trump continues to repeat his lie that US schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ consent — even though his own campaign could not find a single example of this having happened.
Trump debuted the tale in late August. It was debunked by CNN and others in early September. But the former president, whose campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on late-campaign attack ads related to transgender people, has revived the story in October as Election Day draws near.
He made the claim once more during his Friday interview with prominent podcast host Joe Rogan: “Who would want to have — there’s so many — the transgender operations: Where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male — to a female — without parental consent.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim remains false. There is no evidence that schools in any part of the United States have sent children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ approval, or performed unapproved gender-affirming surgeries on site; none of that is “allowed” anywhere in the country. Even in the states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
Trump’s campaign and four conservative groups contacted by CNN in September about the former president’s claim were unable to find any evidence for it. Experts on health care for transgender people said the situation Trump described simply does not happen in this country.
Landon Hughes, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author of a recent study on the prevalence of gender-affirming surgery in the US, said in a September email: “There are no instances of children receiving surgeries or access to surgeries from their schools.” Hughes added: “No provider in the US would perform surgery on a minor under the direction of a school, let alone without parental consent.”
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