The state is endangering minors despite no sound evidence showing the benefits of transgender treatments — and mounting evidence showing the harm.

W ho cares about truth — or protecting kids — when gender ideology is on the line?

That’s the best way to understand Oregon’s decision on February 7 to join a court case against the Trump administration’s new limitations on transgender treatments for children and teenagers under 19 years old. The lawsuit was filed by Attorney General Dan Rayfield as one of his first acts in office, but state records reveal the suit rests on a foundation of falsehoods. As a lifelong liberal Democrat who believes gender-distressed kids should have access to evidence-based care, it pains me to see my state put politics ahead of children’s health.

Oregon, along with Washington and Minnesota, is suing the Trump administration for its January 28 executive order which cut off federal funding from medical providers that give puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries to children. On February 14, the federal judge in the case granted a two-week injunction blocking the president’s order. The lawsuit claims from the start that the president’s order is baseless, not least because “transgender minors do not receive gender-affirming genital surgery.” How can the president ban something that doesn’t happen?

But these surgeries do happen. In 2021, the Oregon Health Authority provided me with a copy of its insurance claims database for the year 2019. The database covers the private health insurance and Medicaid payments for all medical procedures of 92 percent of the state’s population. This includes gender-affirming treatment. In 2019, two biological girls had their ovaries and uteruses removed because of their gender distress. They were just 17 years old. Four 18-year-olds also received genital surgeries. What’s more, the medical advocacy group Do No Harm has data from insurance companies showing 26 genital surgeries were conducted on minors in Oregon between 2019 and 2023. Another 330 minors received “top” surgeries — i.e., breast reductions or double mastectomies.

So much for Oregon’s claim that kids don’t get surgeries. But the lawsuit has another — and even more concerning — lie. The state claims that “gender-affirming care is medically appropriate and necessary health care.” But the state quietly reached the opposite conclusion two years ago, only to bury the findings because they didn’t fit the demands of gender ideologues.

In 2023, the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Evidence Review Commission began a review of the latest medical science regarding transgender treatments. It wrote a draft report, which I obtained via public records requests. The investigators found a “paucity of data,” with no systematic reviews showing benefits of transgender treatments for children. But the draft was never finalized, and the report never published. It was even withheld from the commission’s medical experts. Instead, in November 2023, and without any of its own standard expert analysis, the commissioners endorsed third-party guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Those guidelines suffer from serious methodological and medical shortcomings, as the U.K.’s Cass Report made clear last year.

Oregon officials are well aware that the state is playing tricks with children’s health. In April 2024, according to the records I obtained, the state Department of Justice advised the Oregon Health Authority to withdraw its endorsement of those third-party guidelines. The chair of the evidence commission also complained to a colleague about the “suppression, obfuscation, and misrepresentation of evidence” in transgender medicine, saying “we can do better as a medical community.” The commission’s director also told the deputy director of the Oregon Health Authority, “everyone I am talking to agrees there is little evidence.” But when presented last year with recommendations to repeal or at least modify the dangerous guidelines, the authority’s director — a political appointee — refused.

This is a clear-cut case of politicians rejecting evidence in favor of ideology. Oregon is enabling children and teenagers to get genital surgeries that forever alter their bodies and likely ruin their chances of healthy sexual function as adults. The state is endangering them despite no sound evidence showing the benefits of such treatments — and mounting evidence showing the harm. Hiding the truth from patients, and lying about their surgeries in court, is a horrific disservice to vulnerable children. If my home state was honest about what’s happening, perhaps we’d be able to help these distressed kids instead of hurting them further.