Biden’s Trans-Identifying Top Health Official: ‘I Have No Regrets’ About Lengthy Transition Because ‘I Can’t Imagine a Life Without My Children’

A Biden administration top health official who identifies as transgender and has encouraged parents and doctors to use puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to immediately “affirm” a child’s preferred “gender identity,” said during a public event he has “no regrets” that his “transition” took over 10 years because he “can’t imagine a life without my children.”

As a headline at The Washington Stand noted, Dr. Rachel (born Richard) Levine appears to have admitted that “gender transition procedures can cause sterility.”

Grassroots parental rights advocate Megan Brock drew attention to the clip of Levine explaining that his “transition” was “very different” than those of young people today and that it took so long because of “professional and mostly personal reasons.”

“Most people don’t take that long to transition,” Levine said. “First of all, young people are not willing to do that. And, you know, I mean, I don’t know if I was, if I was 15 now, I don’t know if I would have taken so long but, but again, when I was 15, what were you gonna say and who would you tell? How would you possibly express that?”

Levine continued that once gender ideology became embedded in the culture, it became easier to identify as a gender that is at odds with one’s biological sex.

“So, the language started about you know, that was now 20 years ago, when I started, and I kind of started this journey, and it was starting to become more in culture in the internet and support groups, etc.,” he said. “So, I took a long time.”

Levine, nevertheless, said he has “no regrets” for taking a decade to identify as transgender.

“But I have no regrets because if I transitioned when I was young, I wouldn’t have my children,” he stated. “I can’t imagine a life without my children. And so, every experience led me here. And, and, so, how could I regret that?”

During an interview in April with National Public Radio (NPR), Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS), claimed there is “no argument among medical professionals – pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera – about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care,” which includes puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, such as elective double mastectomies, for young people.

“Trans youth in particular are being hounded in public and driven to deaths of despair at an alarming rate,” Levine told NPR, spreading the fear that children who are not immediately “affirmed” in their new “gender identity” are likely to commit suicide.

Condemning state legislation intended to curb child gender transition, Levine cited The Trevor Project for statistics:

Fifty-two percent of all transgender and nonbinary young people in the U.S. seriously contemplated killing themselves in 2020. Think about how many of them thought it was better to die than to put up with any more harassment, scapegoating and intentional abuse.

A veteran child psychologist, who preferred to write anonymously for fear of “professional repercussions,” posted an essay in February; however, that warned how caving to the woke narrative that being “kind” and “affirming,” i.e., celebrating a child’s claim of a different gender, could be a death sentence instead.

Even so-called “social transition,” i.e., changing out clothing, names, and pronouns to match the “new” gender, is “a short-term strategy with long-term consequences,” she said.

“In the long term, it creates a problem which is not reversible,” the psychologist warned. “Puberty is going to arrive, and the child who has been socially transitioned is put in an impossible situation. They’ve been told all their life they are a boy (and that anyone who says they aren’t is transphobic), but their body knows otherwise.”

The psychologist explained that parents often feel a sense of relief when they encourage their “trans” child to engage in social transition.

“They feel they’ve found the solution – and they are scared of what might happen to their child as they grow older, because they’ve been told that the consequences of not transitioning a child are disaster,” she wrote. “Usually suicide.”

In February 2021, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Levine, during his Senate confirmation hearings, about the fact that, in 2017, Levine recommended omitting puberty blockers in homeless teens suffering from gender dysphoria and “accelerating” cross-sex hormones while they are estranged from their parents.

During an address titled “It’s a Transgeneration: Issues in Transgender Medicine,” Levine told listeners transgender medical industry professionals who are treating “street” teens should not go through the usual protocol of first prescribing puberty blockers.

Instead, Levine urged them to immediately prescribe cross-sex hormones because these young people have been “essentially thrown out by their parents because of their gender identity and expression.”

“Well, Senator, thank you for your interest in this question,” Levine responded to Paul’s question. “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Health, I would look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine.”

Paul asserted the nominee had evaded the question and gave the reminder the specific question he asked was about minor children, and about whether Levine supported the government’s intervention to override parental consent for transgender treatments.

Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, the director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand Levine’s comments he has “no regrets” for taking a long time to “transition” because he was, as a result, able to have children, are “illustrative of a psychological disconnect that is embedded in the approach and the implementation of transgenderism.”

“Every front that you look at with the transgender ideology, you see this disconnect between science and the practice, the ethics and the practice, the knowledge of what we know about development and the practice,” she noted. “It is the most disassociated ideology,” she asserted, adding:

Here we have from the very top someone who is illustrating this very dynamic by saying, “In my personal life, I’m so grateful that I didn’t transition as a child so that I was able to have what I wanted, but let me impose this on everyone else.” It’s distressing and at the same time not surprising because it is such an apropos representation of an ideology that promotes disassociation — the right hand literally does not know what the left hand is doing.

Recent data from health insurance claims shows puberty blocker and cross-sex hormone prescriptions for children aged 6-17 have doubled since 2017.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) told The Star News Network these data are “horrifying,” given that children are being “prescribed dangerous drugs or subjected to mutilating surgery for ‘affirming’ a false diagnosis.”

“Real medical conditions not caused by an infectious agent do not increase like this,” Orient asserted. “’Recognition’ of a formerly rarely recognized condition, in immature, easily exploited persons, comes about because of suggestion.”

“There is no transgender,” she added. “There are boys and girls who are unhappy and are being told that they can be made happy by interfering with their normal maturation process or anatomy.”

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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Rachel Levine” by Rachel Levine.