FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Health and Human Services pushed back after Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, compared transgender medical procedures to circumcision.
HHS under President Donald Trump published a comprehensive peer-reviewed study finding “extremely weak evidence” for any benefits from sex-rejecting procedures in pursuit of a transgender identity. The agency has also investigated allegedly false medical billing for experimental transgender medical procedures, which supporters call “gender-affirming care.”
“Comparing sex-rejecting procedures, which alter healthy reproductive anatomy and can result in irreversible harm, to a routine, limited medical procedure is a gross distortion of their fundamentally different scope and consequences,” HHS Press Secretary Grace Davis Jamison told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.
“The Trump administration and HHS stand firm that children must be protected from sex-rejecting medical interventions with lifelong consequences and will continue to put the health and well-being of children ahead of political ideology,” Jamison added.
El-Sayed’s Comparison
Jamison was responding to remarks made by El-Sayed on Fox News Monday night.
Fox host Jesse Watters asked the Democrat, “Sex changes for minors, do you support that?”
El-Sayed initially responded by comparing the issue to the Right to Try Act, arguing that it reflects the principle that government should not dictate medical decisions.
“You think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off?” Watters pressed.
“Do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised?” El-Sayed asked.
“Circumcision’s different than castration,” the Fox host responded.
“It’s a problem that you think that you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient, and I’m just saying that yes, circumcision is surgery on a kids’ ding-a-ling, so if you really want to bring that up, you can,” El-Sayed replied.
After bringing up the comparison and suggesting that Watters had initially brought it up, El-Sayed pivoted, claiming that Watters had “not asked me one time about the issues that people actually care about in Michigan,” such as gas prices, groceries, and health care.
“We spent the whole interview talking about that stuff,” Watters replied.
El-Sayed did not explicitly state that the procedures are medically equivalent, but raised circumcision while defending parental and medical decision-making authority.
El-Sayed Campaign Responds
The Daily Signal reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment on the circumcision comparison, and a spokesman did not address the issue.
“Abdul has been clear that parents know what’s best for their families, and these decisions should be made by them and their doctors, not the government,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak told the Daily Signal.
“Fox News wants to talk about this in bad faith to change the subject on the issues everyday Michiganders are facing, rising gas prices, failing schools, unaffordable groceries, and the fact that folks can’t see a doctor,” Wozniak added. “Those are the problems Abdul is trying to address, unlike [Michigan GOP Senate candidate] Mike Rogers and Donald Trump whose chaotic tariffs and endless war are hurting Michigan families.”
Medical Watchdog on Circumcision
Do No Harm, a medical watchdog, also condemned the circumcision comparison.
“The suggestion that circumcision in any way is equitable to or justifies transgender surgeries on minors is a weak and dishonest attempt to muddy the waters on a politically toxic issue,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a nephrologist who serves as Do No Harm’s chairman, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.
“The fact that this political spin is coming from a so-called doctor and political candidate further raises concerns about the embrace of pseudo-science by radical activists who continue to push for these procedures despite evidence that sex-rejecting interventions, particularly genital surgeries, are high-risk and cause lasting harm to kids,” he added.
The Daily Signal reached out to the Human Rights Campaign, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics for comment, and did not receive a response by publication time.
