Hospitals in the nation’s capital, Colorado, and Virginia said on Thursday that they have put a halt to gender-affirming care for youth while they assess President Donald Trump’s executive order that would reduce federal funding for such care.
In order to comply with the executive order and maintain federal funds, Denver Health in Colorado has ceased performing gender-affirming procedures on patients under the age of 19, a spokeswoman said Thursday. It’s unclear if the hospital will keep offering puberty blockers and hormone therapy, among other gender-affirming treatments, to young people.
VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond in Virginia announced that they had stopped providing gender-affirming drugs and surgeries to anyone younger than 19.
Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., announced that it had stopped prescribing hormone therapy and puberty blockers in order to follow the instructions while we further evaluate the situation. According to a spokeswoman on Thursday, the hospital already did not operate on children for gender-affirming surgery.
In an effort to undo Biden administration rules that were designed to safeguard transgender individuals and their treatment, Trump signed the directive on Tuesday. It directed authorities to take action to ensure that hospitals that receive federal money for research and education stop mutilating minors chemically and surgically.
The Associated Press was informed by other hospitals that they would not change their current procedures. According to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, hospital representatives are examining the directive and determining whether it would have an effect on the clinical services provided to the families of our patients.
According to the statement, our team will keep pushing for access to medically necessary care that is based on compassion for the patient-families we have the honor of serving and on scientific principles.
The use of terms like “mutilation,” “sterilization,” and “mawing” in Trump’s executive order runs counter to the norm for gender-affirming care in the US. Additionally, it dismisses the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s recommendations as pseudoscientific.
According to a statement from WPATH, patients and their families suffer when transgender kids are denied access to essential medical care.
It is uncommon for transgender youth to receive gender-affirming medical care. Less than 1 in 1,000 commercially insured teenagers in the United States got hormones or puberty blockers in the last five years, according to a recent study, and the majority of gender-affirming procedures are not done on young people.
The Denver hospital stated that its transgender patients will continue to get primary and behavioral health care, but that Trump’s directive would have an impact on their mental health.
According to the hospital’s statement, Denver Health is dedicated to and extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of its gender-diverse patients under the age of 19.