By Hank Russell
New York Attorney General Letitia James blasted the Trump administration for proposing to enforce the president’s executive order, which bans doctors and hospitals from performing sex change operations — also known as “gender affirming care” — on children under the age of 18. She claimed that the EO will “hurt” and “isolate” children in need of this surgical procedure.
On December 18, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a series of proposed regulatory actions to carry out President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) directing the HHS to end the practice of sex-rejecting procedures on children that the agency said expose young people to irreversible harm. These procedures include pharmaceutical or surgical interventions of specified types that attempt to align a child’s physical appearance or body with an asserted identity different from their sex.
Trump signed the EO on January 25. “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” Trump wrote in the EO. “ This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
He continued, “Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. signed a declaration, based on an HHS peer-reviewed report, finding that these procedures do not meet professionally recognized standards of health care. Under the declaration, practitioners who perform sex-rejecting procedures on minors would be deemed out of compliance with those standards.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a notice of proposed rulemaking to bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs. Additionally, CMS will release an additional notice of proposed rulemaking to prohibit federal Medicaid funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18.
The same prohibition would apply to federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding for these procedures on individuals under age 19. Currently, 27 states do not provide Medicaid coverage of sex-rejecting procedures on children.
James — who sued the Trump administration in August over the proposed ban and filed two amicus briefs opposing the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) subpoena for patient records related to gender-affirming care at Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in February — ripped into the HHS’ decision.
“This president would rather target young people than lower costs or expand access to health care,” James said. “It is reprehensible that our federal government is intent on hurting and isolating the adolescents it is supposed to protect. I will use every tool at my disposal to fight this proposal and protect transgender Americans and their families.”
Long Island Life & Politics reached out to the HHS. “The Attorney General talks about protecting children, while promoting sex-rejecting procedures that rob children of their future,” said agency spokesperson Andrew Nixon. “HHS worked with nine academics with professional backgrounds in medicine, bioethics, psychology, and philosophy to conduct the most comprehensive review to date of the standard of care for gender dysphoria in minors.
He cited the peer-reviewed report, which stated that the use of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries for children are “dangerous,” resulting in infertility, loss of sexual function, reduced bone density, metabolic and cognitive effects, and surgical complications. “They can scar kids — physically and figuratively — for life,” he said.
“The days of junk science are over,” Nixon continued. “HHS will continue to protect children and prevent taxpayers from footing the bill for chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures. These actions are grounded in evidence and shaped by compassion.”