Republican Ads Distort the Facts in Claiming Democratic Support for ‘Sex Changes’ for Kids

Republican campaigns and allied groups have spent more than one hundred million dollars on over two hundred ads since August containing the phrase 'sex change,' targeting Democratic Senate candidates including Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The ads claim support for taxpayer-funded child sex-change surgeries, but the underlying evidence does not hold up: gender-affirming surgeries typically occur in adulthood, and Ohio itself banned such care for minors in 2024.

One ad campaign features Soren Aldaco, who had a double mastectomy at nineteen, as a child supposedly operated on without parental consent. She was an adult at the time of surgery; the medication she received as a minor is a separate matter the ad's sponsors conflated when pressed for evidence.

Brown's supposed support for the practice traces to a 2023 interview where he was asked about a bill banning gender-affirming care broadly, not to any endorsement of childhood surgery. A 2023 letter he co-signed with other senators addressed discrimination concerns, not surgical access for minors. The actual population affected is a small fraction of Americans: an estimated 0.8% of adults and 3.3% of youth identify as transgender, per the Williams Institute.

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