Fact check: Republicans’ deceptive ads on key Democratic candidates’ stances on gender surgery for children

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — Across the country, Republican groups are running deceptive ads attacking Democratic Senate candidates on the subject of gender surgery for children.

CNN reviewed ads that have aired in competitive races in Ohio, Texas, Iowa and South Carolina. They use a variety of false or misleading tactics.

In Ohio, two Republican ads accusing Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown of supporting gender surgeries “for minors” feature the personal story of a woman who laments that she received hormone injections and surgery, then asserts seconds later, “I was a kid”; she says in one of the ads that her surgery happened “without my parents’ consent.” But the woman had the surgery at age 19, when she was a legal adult for whom no parental consent was necessary.

In Texas, at least two Republican ads claiming that Democratic candidate James Talarico supported spending taxpayer money on gender surgeries for minors cite his vote against a 2023 state bill that banned both the surgeries and other gender identity care for people under age 18. But the ads ignore the fact that Talarico voted in favor of failed amendments that would have let the bill ban the surgeries for minors while continuing to allow them to have access to hormone therapy and puberty-blocking medication. Talarico says he opposes the surgeries for minors.

In Iowa, a Republican ad claims Democratic candidate Josh Turek voted to spend public money on gender surgeries for minors. But its supposed evidence is Turek’s 2025 vote on a health care measure that wasn’t even about gender surgeries for minors, which were already prohibited in Iowa. The multi-part measure did create a new prohibition on state Medicaid money being used to pay for gender identity care for adults, but Turek explained at the time that his opposition was based on provisions unrelated to gender policy – insufficient funding, he argued, for programs supporting elderly, disabled and low-income Iowans. Turek’s campaign says he opposes the surgeries for minors.

And a Republican ad in South Carolina does not cite any source for its claim that Democratic candidate Annie Andrews “isn’t shy” about supporting gender identity care including “surgeries – for minors.” Andrews has said for years that she opposes the surgeries for minors, though she does support other gender identity care for them. The ad displays what looks like a newspaper op-ed headline reading “Annie Andrews: Trans the Kids,” but it’s an artificial image featuring gibberish as the supposed article text.

The limited available data suggests a tiny percentage of transgender people receive surgery as minors and that the vast majority of the gender surgeries that minors do receive are chest procedures between the ages of 15 and 17.

Various other media outlets have previously addressed the accuracy of the ads we are discussing in this article, including PolitiFact, Popular Information and the Austin American-Statesman. Here are more facts about each of the ads.

Ads targeting Sherrod Brown of Ohio

At least three deceptive ads attacking Brown on gender issues have been aired by the Senate Leadership Fund, an organization aligned with Republicans’ Senate leadership. Two are narrated by a woman, Soren Aldaco, who has said she underwent a double mastectomy in 2021 as part of a transition to male. Aldaco came to regret the transition and the surgery, which she says was “botched,” and became vocal as a “detransitioner.”

In one of the ads, Aldaco begins: “Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors – irreversible surgery on kids. Like me.” She then says, “At 11, I was groomed by strangers online. At 15, a doctor told my family I was transgender. Hormone injections, then surgery – without my parents’ consent. I was a kid.” In the other ad, Aldaco again mentions the hormone injections and the surgery, says she endured “years of trauma,” then says, “I wasn’t born in the wrong body. I was a kid. But Sherrod Brown supports sex-change surgeries for minors and admitted he would never oppose it.”

According to her own account of her journey, though, Aldaco was legally an adult when she received the surgery. As News 5 Cleveland pointed out last week, she has made clear that she received the surgery at 19 – an age at which parental consent is not required for medical treatment – and that the procedure took place at a clinic in Texas. Brown represented Ohio in the Senate from 2007 to 2025 and an Ohio district in the House before that.

Asked for comment, Senate Leadership Fund spokesperson Chris Gustafson noted that Aldaco has said she was prescribed hormones as a 17-year-old minor at an appointment she was taken to by her stepmother rather than the mother who had legal authority over her. Aldaco defended her comments on similar grounds, highlighting that she was a minor when she began identifying as transgender and receiving gender identity care.

“I was 11, freshly groomed, when I started identifying as trans – 15 when doctors got involved, 17 when they prescribed hormones without valid consent, and 19, still a teenager and a college kid, when I underwent a double mastectomy – and I’ll never get back the seven years of childhood that recent reporting has omitted,” she said in an email.

But Aldaco didn’t say in the ads themselves that she was 19 or “a college kid” at the time of the surgery. Rather, shortly after mentioning the surgery, she said in each ad that she was “a kid.” Coupled with the ads’ focus on gender surgery “for minors,” Aldaco’s comments in the ads leave the clear and false impression that her surgery, not just her previous treatment, occurred when she was a minor.

Brown released a response ad this week in which a narrator says, as an image of Aldaco is shown on screen, “Seen these ads? They’re a complete lie. Records show not only is this woman actually from Texas, she didn’t have any surgery as a minor.”

The Senate Leadership Fund has run another ad on the same topic. It begins: “Abused and exploited by an extremist agenda. Forcing childhood sex-change surgery. But Sherrod Brown stands with these extremists.” This ad cites no sources, and there is no evidence Brown has supported “forcing” surgery on children or anyone else, as PolitiFact noted last week.

Both of the ads that feature Aldaco cite the same Columbus television news segment from 2023 for the claim that Brown supports gender surgeries for children. We couldn’t track down the full clip, but the Brown quote the Senate Leadership Fund has previously cited as evidence is this: “A child’s health care decisions are between them, their parents, their families, their doctors, not politicians. I will never agree with anybody that wants to bring politics into the family situation with health care, period.”

Brown made that comment in response to a question from WSYX ABC 6 journalist Darrel Rowland. Upon request this week, Rowland, who is now retired, provided a transcript of the exchange. He had asked Brown a question about his relationship with then-Ohio senator JD Vance, noting at one point that Vance had just introduced a bill “dealing with what he called genital mutilation, making gender-affirming care illegal” (for minors). Brown’s reply is open to interpretation, but it didn’t specifically mention surgeries, and the question he was addressing also invoked “gender-affirming care” more broadly.

Brown released a response ad in September that pointed out it’s illegal in Ohio to provide gender surgeries on minors – that’s been the case since 2024 – and dismissed this Republican attack as a distraction from important issues like high prices. It did not specify a Brown position on the surgeries in general.

“In Ohio, this is already settled law. Sherrod is focused on taking on the rigged system and improving the lives of Ohioans,” campaign spokesperson Lauren Chou said in an email this week, going on to criticize Brown’s Republican opponent, Sen. Jon Husted.

Ads targeting James Talarico of Texas

Wealthy Trump ally Elon Musk’s America PAC has run numerous midterm ads blasting Democrats on gender issues. One of them claims Talarico voted “for taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.” An ad from Texas PAC, a group connected to the Senate Leadership Fund, similarly says, “Talarico supported using taxpayer dollars for sex-change surgeries on young children.”

Both ads make clear they are basing the claim on the fact that Talarico voted against a Texas state bill in 2023 that banned not only gender surgeries for minors but also other forms of gender identity care for minors, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers; state Attorney General Ken Paxton, Talarico’s opponent and the state’s chief lawyer, has asserted that the prohibition also covers mental health care that facilitates a minor’s transition. But neither ad mentions that Talarico had voted for unsuccessful amendments that would have limited the bill to the surgery ban.

Asked for comment, Talarico’s campaign said he opposes gender surgeries for minors. The campaign pointed to a September interview with Fox News in which he explained his 2023 votes.

Talarico called the 2023 bill “overly broad” and correctly said that “if you go back and check, I voted for a major amendment to limit the bill to banning surgeries for minors.” He added, “As a lawmaker, my job is to try to sift through everything the bill does. And sometimes there’s stuff in it that’s really harmful, and I have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole. It’s why I try to use amendments, to narrow the focus of the bill so that it does exactly what we intend it to do.”

Asked for comment, Gustafson of the Senate Leadership Fund reiterated that Talarico voted against the 2023 bill. His email acknowledged that the bill also banned hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors, but it did not address Talarico’s support for an attempt to limit the bill to a surgery ban. A spokesperson for Musk’s group did not reply to a request for comment.

An ad targeting Josh Turek of Iowa

An inaccurate Iowa ad from Musk’s group claims that Turek, a state representative now running for Senate against Rep. Ashley Hinson, “voted to spend our tax dollars on sex-change surgeries for children.” It cites Turek’s vote on a broad 2025 item in the state House.

That measure did multiple things, including provide money for health care and veterans’ services. It also included a ban on state Medicaid funds being used to reimburse various kinds of gender identity care for people of any age. Specifically, it said the money “shall not be used for reimbursement for sex reassignment surgery or associated procedures, including hormone therapy or other medical interventions intended to alter primary or secondary sex characteristics related to an individual’s gender dysphoria diagnosis.”

Even if Turek had voted against the broad measure because he opposed this specific provision, that wouldn’t mean he voted in favor of spending tax money on gender surgeries “for children” as the ad claims. That’s because Iowa had already banned gender surgeries, hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors in 2023 (in a vote for which Turek was absent).

And according to the speech Turek gave before the vote on the measure in 2025, his vote wasn’t even focused on the gender-related provision. Rather, he spoke of how he thought the measure was inadequate in dealing with a “fundamentally unfair and unjust” long wait list for home and community-based services for disabled people, a big shortage of care workers “that really affects the most vulnerable in our state, the disabled and the elderly,” and a loss of funding for a food assistance initiative, among other issues unrelated to gender policy.

Turek’s campaign told PolitiFact earlier this year that he opposes gender surgeries for children, and a campaign spokesperson said in an email this week: “Josh opposes taxpayer-funded sex changes, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.” The spokesperson for Musk’s group did not reply to a request for comment.

An ad targeting Annie Andrews of South Carolina

Andrews, a pediatrician, said during her unsuccessful 2022 run for a House seat that she had “never” supported gender surgeries on minors and that the hospital where she had worked for more than a decade did not perform these procedures. She wrote on social media in 2024: “You would be hard pressed to find a South Carolinian who is MORE on the record on this issue than me. No. I don’t support gender affirming surgeries on minors. Because there isn’t evidence to support it.”

But an ad this year from Security is Strength PAC, which backs her Republican Senate opponent Sen. Darline Graham, features a narrator claiming “Annie Andrews isn’t shy about her support for medical interventions like puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries – for minors.”

Andrews is on record supporting “gender-affirming care” for minors in general, including the use of puberty blockers and hormones, on the grounds that it has “been shown to reduce the incidence and frequency of suicide and suicidal ideation in trans youth.” She said last year that such treatments are given to “a subset” of children identifying as a different gender and employed “after many, many, many meetings with pediatricians, endocrinologists, mental health providers.”

But the ad provides no basis at all for the claim she supports minors getting gender surgeries in particular, which she has repeatedly opposed. Instead, the ad displays a fake newspaper featuring an imaginary “Annie Andrews: Trans the Kids” headline above article text that is clearly gibberish if you look closely enough.

Asked for comment, Security is Strength noted Andrews’ public opposition to two pieces of state legislation. One was a 2021 state proposal to forbid gender surgeries, hormone therapy and puberty blockers. The other was a 2024 state law that both eliminated all these things for minors and required public schools to immediately notify a parent if a child requests different pronouns or tells an employee their gender doesn’t match their sex.

None of that proves the ad’s claim that Andrews supports gender surgeries for minors. Opposing legislation that broadly eliminates gender identity care for minors does not mean someone supports surgeries in particular.

Andrews released a reply ad this week in which she says Graham is “lying” about her and that “I don’t support and haven’t ever performed gender surgery for minors.”

CNN’s David Wright contributed to this article.

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