Transgender surgery for children constitutes child abuse, Texas commissioner rules

Jaime Masters, commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, determined that genital transgender surgery constitutes child abuse under Texas law.

In the letter, Masters noted that altering a child's genitals in pursuit of transgender identity "may cause a ‘genuine threat of substantial harm from physical injury to the child'" under Texas family code. "This surgical procedure physically alters a child’s genitalia for non-medical purposes potentially inflicting irreversible harm to children’s bodies. Generally, children in the care and custody of a parent lack the legal capacity to consent to surgical treatments, making them more vulnerable." Masters laid out a few situations where genital surgery may not constitute abuse because it might be medically necessary. Such cases include children whose body parts have been affected by illness or trauma; children who are "born with a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development, such as the presence of both ovarian and testicular tissue"; and children who do not "have the normal sex chromosome structure for male or female as determined through genetic testing."