Trump Restricts Health Care for Trans Minors
The president's executive order prohibits federal funds from being spent by institutions providing gender-affirming care to people under 19.
Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting people under the age of 19 from accessing medical treatments or procedures intended to help them undergo a gender transition.
The order, issued on January 28 and titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” prohibits federal funds from being used to cover the cost of such treatments for minors.
The order also directs federal agencies to ensure that medical schools and hospitals receiving any research or education grants are not conducting research on — or providing minors with access to — gender-affirming treatments.
The order directs all federal agencies to rescind guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a nonprofit association that has adopted guidelines for how and when gender-affirming treatments are to be administered to transitioning individuals.
Critics of WPATH have claimed that the organization’s more recent guidelines were based on a political or ideological stance rather than on science.
Trump’s order asserts that “impressionable children” are being lied to and pushed to pursue transition-related treatments that will lead to sterilization and “lifelong medical complications.” It also claims that a large number of minors who do seek out gender-affirming treatments will eventually come to regret their decision to transition.
The order requires TRICARE (the Department of Defense’s insurance plan), Medicaid, and federal employee health insurance plans to refuse to cover the costs of gender-affirming treatments prescribed to minors.
It directs the Department of Justice to “prioritize investigations” of medical providers who “may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Twenty-six states have passed laws restricting individuals under the age of 18 from accessing certain types of gender-affirming care. However, a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this month found that less than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance in the United States are transgender and have been prescribed either puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
And yet, Republican politicians have seized on anti-transgender sentiment as a cultural wedge they can use to rally voters to their side in elections.
Most major medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, have opposed state-level attempts to restrict access to gender-affirming care.
The Williams Institute, an LGBTQ policy think tank, estimates there are about 300,000 transgender youth aged 13 to 17 in the U.S. About one-third of them are believed to live in states with restrictions on gender-affirming care.
“Only eight days into his second term, President Donald Trump has blood on his hands,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement.
“This executive order not only prohibits but intends to set forth a path to potentially criminalize the provision of safe, evidence-based, medically necessary gender-affirming care, endangering the lives of tens of thousands of transgender adolescents under the age of 19.”
Heng-Lehtinen continued, “Denying trans youth medical care will not stop them from being trans. Our trans community survived long before the government ever recognized us.… Trans existence is unyielding, and we will endure.”
The Gender Research Advisory Council + Education (GRACE), a transgender advocacy group, accused Trump of bending to the will of conservative activists who authored Project 2025. The blueprint for conservative governance calls for eradicating LGBTQ legal protections and refusing to recognize transgender identity.
GRACE asserted that the executive order strips away the rights of parents, who previously had been allowed to make medical decisions for their children. It has also criticized the hypocrisy of Republicans, who frequently trumpet the idea of “parental rights” when it comes to educational curricula, and who were vehemently opposed to mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our nation is witnessing firsthand the attempted eradication of people who are transgender,” GRACE Founder and President Alaina Kupec, said in a statement. “Our dehumanization by religious extremists is starkly similar to what took place in 1930s Germany.
“When our country’s leaders like President Trump and [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson [R-La.] use the weight of the government to promote a radical agenda denying our existence, all Americans should stand up and take notice. It may start with the transgender community, but as history has proven, it will not stop with us.”
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