Attorney General and Republican governor candidate Daniel Cameron holds a press conference Thursday, Aug. 10, about a letter revealing that a University of Kentucky clinic had performed some gender-affirming "top surgeries" in recent years at the Jefferson County Republican Party headquarters. 

For months, Kentucky Republicans have said that Gov. Andy Beshear supports gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

Beshear has repeatedly denied such claims, including in a recent television ad where he stated that he has never supported gender reassignment surgery for kids and that those procedures don’t happen in Kentucky. 

However, a recent report revealed that the University of Kentucky’s Transform clinic has performed a small number of “top surgeries” for transgender adolescents as young as 16 in recent years. 

These surgeries involved adding or removing breast tissue, depending on the needs of the patient. 

The clinic never performed genital gender reassignment surgery, sometimes known as “bottom surgery,” though. 

This information comes from a letter sent from the UK HealthCare clinic to Kentucky House Education Chair James Tipton in March 2023.

Tipton had asked about the clinic’s procedures as part of his research for Senate Bill 150, which includes a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors. 

The bill also includes a laundry list of other provisions, including bans on hormone therapy and puberty blockers and school policies limiting or prohibiting instruction on human sexuality, gender expression and identity. 

Beshear originally vetoed the bill before he was overridden by the majority Republican legislature. 

He said that he didn’t veto it based on the ban on gender-affirming surgeries, but he was unable to line-item veto other provisions he did not approve. 

In fact, he recently said that he worked with the Fairness Campaign to get the General Assembly to pass a bill that only included the surgery ban, without the other provisions, so he could sign it. 

Beshear added that he did not know about the UK letter until last week, and was suspicious that it resurfaced several months before the election. 

“Every piece of information that had been provided to the governor’s office from the Fairness Campaign and others from … major medical providing groups were that (gender-affirming surgeries) did not happen in Kentucky,” he said. 

In an interview with Fox 56, Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman backed up Beshear’s comments. Hartman called the timing of the letter’s release a “politically-motivated attack on the governor.” 

“We repeatedly told members of the Kentucky General Assembly majority that if they wanted to ban surgery under the age of 18, we would not oppose that,” Hartman said.

“They kept saying these surgeries are happening, we said not to our knowledge, show us proof if they are, and they never produced a shred of proof. And now six months later we’re going to get this letter that supposedly backs up their case.” 

At a press conference last week, Republican governor candidate Daniel Cameron framed the issue as a continuation of lies he said Beshear has told.

For example, Cameron cited an inaccurate claim that Beshear previously made about having a record number of Kentuckians employed, when he meant a record number of jobs filled. 

He said that the letter was quoted on the State Senate floor during deliberation over SB150. 

“If this governor had even a shred of a relationship with our General Assembly, he would have known the truth,” Cameron said. “So either he didn’t know that these surgeries were happening, or he did and he just lied about it. I’m not sure which is worse.”

Cameron told reporters that the distinction between mastectomies, which is what the UK clinic performed, and what is generally considered gender reassignment surgery was not the issue at hand, but rather that he claims Beshear lied. 

“There’s a pattern,” he said. 

Beshear said that his opponent is “taking this race to the gutter in a way that I have never seen.” 

“This race is supposed to be about the issues that impact our families the most — is my job good enough to provide opportunities for my family, can I afford to take my parents and my kids to a doctor when they’re sick?” he said.

“I just don’t think that this is what Kentuckians want to see.”