Sex-change surgery for minors debate resurfaces in the U.S.

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The debate over how old a person should be before having sex-change surgery has re-ignited in the U.S. in the lead-up to the mid-term elections, according to an exlusive report from The Daily Mail.

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She said a child’s maturity was “more important” than exact age and admitted Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia doctors had done “top surgery” on those as young as 14, which involves removing or implanting breasts.

As the co-director of the Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic, Dowshen was addressing a Pennsylvania House of Representatives medical board review hearing evidence about trans care for minors.

Asked if age limits were in place for sex-change surgeries, Dowshen said in the video: “It is important to remember that age is a number. But as an adolescent medicine and developmental specialist, we know that where a child is cognitively and socially is more important than that exact number of their age.”

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Former Trump administration staffer Candice Jackson told the DailyMail.com exclusively: “Saying ‘age is just a number’ with respect to children is a way of adultifying kids and ignoring everything we know about healthy human physical, mental and emotional development to justify experimenting on vulnerable youth.”

Meanwhile, Patrick Brown, a Conservative Ethics and Public Policy Centre Fellow, told DailyMail.com exclusively: “You’ve seen a couple of people claim you can be whatever age you want, age is just a number. It is hard to put into words how ridiculous that is. We have legal standards around how people mature — we treat children differently to adults. So, the idea that a 14 or 15-year-old would be given the same legal rights and protections as an adult is just contradictory to a whole suite of law.”

Dowshen said in the video that surgeries are mostly done for patients “over the age of 16,” but bottom surgery, which involves removing and implanting genitals, is only performed after the patient turns 18.