Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Washington CNN —
Former President Donald Trump has been making false claims about transgender people – including an inflammatory and baseless claim on Friday that schools are secretly providing or obtaining gender-affirming surgeries for children.
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child,” Trump said in remarks to the conservative group Moms for Liberty.
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. There is no evidence that US schools have sent children into gender-affirming surgeries without their parents knowing or performed gender-affirming surgeries on site; Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening. Even in states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
“Of course everything in this statement is false,” Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an adolescent medicine physician at the Yale School of Medicine, said in a Monday email. “Of course surgery of any kind happens in a qualified medical center and not in a school. Of course parents are the medical decision-makers for their kids, especially when it comes to gender-affirming care.”
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