Some Hospitals Pausing Youth Transgender Care Are Skirting Law
In the last five years, 27 states have passed bans prohibiting transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming care. These treatments include mental health counseling, medication to inhibit or assist with the development of various physical characteristics during puberty, and, in extreme cases, limited surgical intervention—care that the best available medical evidence generally supports. Many transgender children and their parents have fled these states, seeking care elsewhere in the country. Luckily, many other states have passed safe harbor laws, and families that moved could find refuge, assistance, and support for their children.
Or so they thought. Within a few years of moving, many hospitals in their new home states unethically and illegally ceased providing gender-affirming care.
The hospitals’ decision was a response to the barrage of measures President Donald Trump took targeting transgender people. Among these was Executive Order 14187 “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” This order instructs federal agencies to punish medical institutions that provided gender-affirming care to transgender people under the age of 19. As the federal government doesn’t generally directly regulate medical practice, the main tactic the order adopts is to withhold money. The federal government pays for vast amounts of care via Medicare and Medicaid. It also is the single largest funder of medical research and education across the nation. Stop the money, and institutions will fold.