Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Sept. 20, 2024, in Atlanta. / Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 14, 2024 / 10:47 am (CNA).

With Election Day less than a month away, former president Donald Trump is running campaign advertisements in swing states that criticize Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners.

“It’s hard to believe, but it’s true,” a narrator says in one advertisement while showing Harris standing next to Sam Brinton, a former Department of Energy official who is male but is wearing women’s clothing.

“Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala [Harris] supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens,” the narrator continues, adding: “... Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The advertisement features Harris’ response to a 2019 questionnaire sent out by the American Civil Liberties Union in which she promises to use executive authority to ensure that people in prisons — including immigrants charged with entering the country illegally — can obtain gender transition surgeries through government-provided medical care.

“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” Harris said. 

“As [California] attorney general, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates,” she added.

The advertisement also includes a brief clip from a 2019 interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality Fund in which Harris doubles down on the position.

A second Trump advertisement out this month touches on the same subject and details a case in which convicted murderer Shiloh Quine, who is male, reached a legal settlement with then-California Attorney General Harris to obtain government-funded transgender surgery while in prison. 

“He murdered a father of three, sentenced to life in prison,” a narrator says. “Kamala Harris pushed to use tax dollars to pay for his sex change.”

Harris initially represented the Department of Corrections in court, which was refusing to pay for the transgender surgery. However, she ultimately agreed to a settlement in 2015, which required the state to finance the operation.

The settlement made California the first state to pay for a prisoner’s transgender surgery, the Associated Press reported at the time.

In a 2019 news conference Harris said she only defended the department’s policy because she “was obligated” to do so as the attorney general. She said there were times when her clients “took positions that were contrary to [her] beliefs” but that she “worked behind the scenes” to pressure the department to change its policies.

In October 2015, the California Department of Corrections set new guidelines that guarantee government-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners who seek those operations.

Where do the voters stand?

Although public polling on taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries is limited, one poll from America’s New Majority Project this year found that a large majority of Americans oppose tax money paying for those operations.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they do not believe taxpayer-funded health care programs should be required to fund transgender surgeries. Nearly 60% of those surveys went further, saying they would support a law that prohibits tax money from funding those surgeries.

Another poll of likely voters conducted this month showed that a majority of respondents supported a federal ban on transgender procedures for children.

The poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that 59% of voters surveyed support a ban, which includes 82% of Republicans, 36% of Democrats, and 56% of independents.

However, issues related to transgenderism and gender ideology rank low on the list of priorities for most Americans heading to the ballot box, according to public polls.

A Gallup poll released last week found that “transgender rights” was the least important issue to registered voters surveyed when presented with 22 election issues.

When asked whether an issue was extremely important, very important, somewhat important, or not important, only two issues were not viewed as extremely or very important by the majority of reporters — climate change and transgender rights.

Only 18% of voters surveyed said transgender rights was “extremely important” and another 20% said the issue was “very important.” Another 25% said the issue was “somewhat important” and 36% said it was not important.

The top issues were the economy, which 90% of voters said was extremely important or very important, and democracy in the United States, which 85% of voters ranked as extremely important or very important.

Other top issues included terrorism and national security, Supreme Court justice picks, immigration, education, and health care.

Apart from transgender rights and climate change, other issues ranking lower on the priority list were trade with other nations, relations with China, race relations, and relations with Russia.