On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a comprehensive executive order addressing kids’ transition-related medical care.
The directive, Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, aims to prevent minors—defined as individuals under the age of 19—from receiving gender-affirming medical care, such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgery.
It restricts research and education funds to hospitals and medical schools, forbids federal funding from paying for such care for children, and instructs the secretary of health and human services to develop regulations to stop such care for minors.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is a nonprofit organization that focuses on transgender medical treatment and publishes guidance that is frequently utilized by medical practitioners. The order also requires all government agencies to revoke this recommendation.
According to the executive order, which uses inflammatory language to describe transition-related medical care, doctors nationwide are sterilizing and disfiguring an increasing number of impressionable children under the radical and untrue claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.
According to the ruling, more kids will come to regret getting this kind of care, and they are frequently stuck with sterilization and lifelong health issues.
Accordingly, the order declares that the United States will strictly enforce all laws that forbid or restrict these harmful and life-altering practices and that it will not finance, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called transition of a child from one sex to another.
In a statement on Tuesday, the LGBTQ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal pledged to oppose the executive order.
In reference to the fact that the order does not seem to prohibit puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or similar surgeries for minors who are not transgender, Lambda Legal attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said, “This broadside condemns transgender youth to extreme and unnecessary pain and suffering, and their parents to agonized futility in caring for their child, all while denying them access to the same medically recommended health care that is readily available to their cisgender peers.”
With 26 states enacting legislation limiting such care, transition-related care for kids has made news in recent years. Recent studies have revealed that very few minors do, in fact, receive this kind of care. Less than 0.1% of teenagers in the United States with private insurance are transgender or gender nonconforming and are prescribed gender-affirming hormones or puberty blockers, according to a January study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Treatment for trans minors is case-by-case, and any medical intervention must legally be approved by the minor’s parents or legal guardian. Medical standards created by WPATH and other medical organizations advise that children undergo social transition therapy and change their name, pronouns, hairdo, and clothes prior to puberty.
If a youngster has persistent gender dysphoria—the medical term for the extreme mental pain brought on by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex—they may begin taking puberty blockers once they reach puberty. Cross-sex hormones may be started by teenagers, and in rare instances, older teens may have a double mastectomy, in which both breasts are removed.
The majority of significant medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, are in favor of allowing children to receive transition treatment and are against any limitations on it.
The secretary of HHS is instructed to publish a review of the body of research on the best ways to support the health of children who express gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion. This section of Trump’s executive order, Ending Reliance on Junk Science, specifically targets WPATH, claiming that it lacks scientific integrity.
“The Secretary of HHS shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, use all available methods to improve the quality of data to guide practices for improving the health of minors who seek chemical or surgical mutilation or who have gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion,” the order says.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by WPATH.
According to half a dozen recent research, transition-related care lowers suicidality and enhances kids’ mental health. But in December, the UK permanently outlawed the prescribing of new puberty blockers to address gender dysphoria in children. Following an independent review commissioned by England’s National Health Service, which concluded that there was surprisingly little medical evidence supporting transition-related care for children, the prohibition was implemented. Some researchers and campaigners have criticized the report.