CBS News – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively ban [so-called] gender-affirming care for minors, building on broader Trump administration restrictions on [so-called] transgender Americans.
The sweeping proposals include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.
“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference on Thursday. “Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures.”
Thursday’s announcements mark the most significant moves the administration has taken to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children.
They would imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.
The proposals run counter to the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations. And advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration’s claims about gender-affirming care and said Thursday’s moves would put lives at risk.
“The multitude of efforts we are seeing from federal legislators to strip transgender and nonbinary youth of the health care they need is deeply troubling,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, of The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LBGTQ+ youth, who called the changes a “one-size-fits-all mandate from the federal government” on a decision that should be between a doctor and patient.
Medicaid programs in slightly less than half of states currently cover gender-affirming care. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban means most other state laws are likely to remain in place. Tennessee’s law, known as SB1, prohibits medical treatments like puberty blockers or hormone therapy for transgender adolescents under the age of 18 …
