Attorney General Pam Bondi announced her intentions to prosecute some forms of gender-affirming care for minors as female genital mutilation (FGM) in a memo to Department of Justice employees, LawDork reports. It’s not.
Bondi was scathing in her attacks on both providers and proponents of gender-affirming care in her memo, a copy of which was obtained by CNN. She revealed a new DOJ direction targeting and eliminating the medical community and pharmaceutical industry that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“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 …,” Bondi wrote in the memo dated April 22. “That ideology, pushed by far-left politicians, celebrities, politically captured academics, and legacy media, has infected an entire generation of children, who have in tum pushed transgenderism on their peers through social media and other means.”
Bondi directed staff to investigate and prosecute gender-affirming care for minors as FGM, a felony that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.
“In the United States, it is a felony to perform, attempt to perform, or conspire to perform female genital mutilation on any person under the age of 18,” Bondi wrote. “That crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years per count. I am directing all U.S. Attorneys to investigate all suspected cases of FGM – under the banner of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ or otherwise – and to prosecute all FGM offenses to the fullest extent possible.”
Gender-affirming care is not genital mutilation, with gender-affirming bottom surgery almost unheard of for trans youth. Gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers and social transitioning — is supported by every major medical association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Endocrine Society.
Bondi next directed prosecutors to investigate whether hospitals and other institutions mislabelled gender-affirming care to minors as approved services when billing Medicare and Medicaid for reimbursement.
Bondi also directed staff to draft legislation retroactively lengthening the statutes of limitations on civil liability for individual and institutional providers of gender-affirming care to minors, and to work with whistleblowers who could later share in monetary amages or fines.
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