A University of Kentucky health clinic has admitted to performing sex change surgeries on children despite the state's Democratic governor insisting that such procedures "don't happen."
According to a letter sent to a Republican member of the Kentucky General Assembly in March, the university health system's Transform Clinic, which specializes in care for the LGBTQ+ community, said that although it "does not perform genital gender reassignment surgery on minors," it had "performed a small number non-genital gender reassignment surgeries on minors, such as mastectomies for older adolescents" in "recent years."
It added that those surgeries were only performed with parental consent and "careful medical evaluation and discussion."
Prior to the letter surfacing, Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear pushed back on claims from his opponent, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, that he supports such procedures, saying on multiple occasions he does not and has not ever supported sex reassignment surgeries for minors, as well as that such procedures do not, and have never, taken place in the state.
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Beshear's defense prompted Cameron to ramp up his attacks that the governor "lied" about the surgeries never taking place in Kentucky and questioned his opposition to such procedures.
Cameron pointed to Beshear's veto of SB 150 earlier this year, a bill passed by the Kentucky legislature to ban gender transition surgeries for minors, prohibit school discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity, and prevent teachers from being forced to use a student's preferred pronouns.
In his veto, which was later overridden by the Republican-controlled state legislature, Beshear argued the bill allowed "too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children," and that it would "cause an increase in suicide among Kentucky's youth."
Fox News Digital asked Beshear about the clinic's letter during an interview on Aug. 4, which he dismissed as a "lie" from Cameron.
"I have never supported gender reassignment surgeries for kids, and they don't happen across Kentucky. But they continue to put it out there, to claim that they do, and it's simply not true. If you have to lie to win a campaign, if you have to resort to fearmongering about something that doesn't happen, then you shouldn't be governor in the first place," he said.
Cameron lashed out at Beshear after his interview with Fox, saying in a statement that "we know for a fact that gender reassignment surgery for kids was taking place in Kentucky," and repeating his criticism of the governor for vetoing SB 150.
In a separate statement to Fox on Thursday, he said that Beshear "looked directly into the camera and lied, again."
"The letter speaks for itself. These sick surgeries on kids were happening on his watch. Andy Beshear has a problem with the truth. It's a pattern and I won't let him get away with it," he said. He was backed up in his attacks by the Republican Governors Association, which released an ad accusing Beshear of forcing a "radical transgender agenda" on Kentucky.
However, in a Thursday press conference, Beshear pushed back, saying he would have "signed a bill that solely prohibited gender reassignment surgeries for minors had it reached my desk." He also directly addressed the letter again, saying that all the information his office had been provided from medical providers and others was that gender reassignment surgeries "did not happen."
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"That letter was new to me, though apparently it had been sent to somebody else months earlier, which raises questions on its own. But at the end of the day how has this race gone here? Daniel Cameron has taken this race to the gutter in a way that I have never seen," he said.
"Right now, if you ask him about climate change he'll say it's caused by gender reassignment surgeries," he added before calling on Cameron to take down the ads, arguing they were exposing the children seeing them to sex change surgeries.
Beshear campaign spokesperson Alex Floyd reiterated the governor's statement, saying he "did not receive reports from the medical community of such surgeries."
"The only person lying in this race is Daniel Cameron. Despite ads that have been fact-checked by multiple outlets and even flagged as hate speech, his flailing campaign is still sticking with this false attack because he can make no coherent argument for why voters shouldn't reelect Andy Beshear," Floyd added.
The race between Beshear and Cameron is expected to be the most-watched of the 2023 election cycle and is widely being viewed as a bellwether for the 2024 elections.
The general election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 7.
