“Sex change” operations conducted on children are “condemnation to a life of misery,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a House education hearing this week.

During his line of questioning, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) asked Kennedy about the phenomenon of professional medical societies and mental health associations endorsing these operations.

“To me, it means we just can’t trust the medical societies. But why do you believe they did this? Why were the mental health professional people pushing sex change operations on 14-year-old kids?” he asked the secretary.

Kennedy said it is a multi-billion dollar industry, adding, “I think that you know, the corruption follows the money, but you look at the signs.”

“There’s now been two major … reviews been done,” he said, referencing a UK study which effectively stopped Europeans from funding these surgeries. The United States did its own review plus individual studies that “showed the same thing.”

“The results to children, the outcomes in children are catastrophic. In terms of depression, suicide, all kinds of illnesses, it’s condemnation to a life of misery, and there is no scientific justification,” Kennedy made clear.

When asked what can be done to protect children from these medical associations harming them, Kennedy listed several steps the Trump administration has already taken, including ending all federal funding for puberty blockers and gender mutilation surgeries.

“We have instructed hospitals and medical centers around the country that if they do host those kinds of interventions, that they will lose all their Medicaid and Medicare funding,” Kennedy said.

Days after assuming office in his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM CHEMICAL AND SURGICAL MUTILATION,” making it clear that the United States “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.”

Grothman added, “What scares me is the professionals who pushed this stuff in the past are still practicing. And that concerns me, because if they can’t get this right … if they’re pushing sex change operations on 14-year-old kids, I’m afraid they probably can’t get anything right.”

The congressman asked Kennedy if he would ever send one of his grandchildren to a medical professional who pushed that kind of stuff even if he knew they stopped.

“I would not,” Kennedy responded.