President Donald Trump signed a broad executive order targeting transition-related medical take care of minors Tuesday.
The order, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” intends to limit access to gender-affirming medical care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery — for minors, which it defines as those younger than 19.
It prohibits federal funding from covering such take care of minors, restricts research and education grants to medical schools and hospitals, and directs the secretary of Health and Human Services to issue regulations to finish such take care of minors.
The order also directs all federal agencies to rescind guidance from the World Skilled Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, a nonprofit association dedicated to transgender medical care that issues guidance that’s widely utilized by health care professionals.
“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing variety of impressionable children under the unconventional and false claim that adults can change a toddler’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the manager order states, using inflammatory language to explain transition-related medical care.
The order states that more children will come to regret receiving such care and that they’re “often trapped with lifelong medical complications” and sterilization.
“Accordingly, it’s the policy of the US that it’ll not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a toddler from one sex to a different, and it’ll rigorously implement all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” the order states.
Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy group, promised to fight the manager order in an announcement Tuesday.
“This broadside condemns transgender youth to extreme and unnecessary pain and suffering, and their parents to agonized futility in caring for his or her child — all while denying them access to the identical medically really useful health care that is instantly available to their cisgender peers,” said Lambda Legal attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, alluding to the undeniable fact that the order doesn’t appear to bar puberty blockers, hormone therapy or similar surgeries for minors who will not be transgender.
Transition-related take care of minors has dominated headlines lately, with 26 states passing laws restricting such care. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a small variety of minors actually access any such care. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics in January found that lower than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance within the U.S. are transgender or gender-diverse and are prescribed puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones.
Trans minors are treated on a case-by-case basis and are legally required to receive their parents’ or guardian’s consent to receive any medical intervention. Before a toddler starts puberty, medical standards developed by WPATH and other medical organizations recommend that a toddler receive therapy and social transition, or changing their hairstyle, clothing, name and pronouns.
Once a toddler begins puberty, they might start puberty blockers in the event that they have persistent gender dysphoria, which is the medical term for the severe emotional distress brought on by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex. Teenagers might start cross-sex hormones, and, in rare cases, some older teens may receive a double mastectomy, where each breasts are removed.
Most major medical associations, corresponding to the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, support access to transition take care of minors and oppose restrictions on it.
One section of Trump’s executive order, “Ending Reliance on Junk Science,” specifically takes aim at WPATH, arguing that it “lacks scientific integrity,” and directs the secretary of HHS to “publish a review of the prevailing literature on best practices for promoting the health of youngsters who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.”
“The Secretary of HHS, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall use all available methods to extend the standard of information to guide practices for improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation,” the order states.
WPATH didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Half a dozen studies in recent years have found that transition-related care improves minors’ mental health and reduces suicide rates. Nevertheless, in December, the UK indefinitely banned recent prescriptions of puberty blockers to treat minors for gender dysphoria. The ban followed an independent study commissioned by England’s National Health Service that found that medical evidence for transition-related take care of minors was “remarkably weak.” The study has faced criticism from some researchers and activists.
