Trump issues order prohibiting gender affirming care for kids and teens

President Trump has issued an executive order that blocks gender transition care for those under 19, and would deny federal funds to providers offering such services.

Trump issued the order Tuesday and faulted the healthcare organizations providing gender-affirming care.

“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,” the order states. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”

Trump’s executive order states: “The Secretary of HHS shall, consistent with applicable law, take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

Under the order, those actions include “Medicare or Medicaid conditions of participation or conditions for coverage.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump emphasized his aim to cut off federal funds to providers offering gender-affirming care.

Trump wrote: “My order directs agencies to use every available means to cut off federal financial participation to institutions which seek to provide these barbaric medical procedures, that should never have been allowed to take place!”

The White House order states that those who choose to transition later come to regret it, including those who may wish later to have children. The order is labeled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

The executive order moves to block the use of puberty blockers, sex hormones and surgical procedures. The executive order also excoriates the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and its standards, saying the group “lacks scientific integrity.”

The American Civil Liberties Union pledged to block the order, saying, “We will not allow this policy to stand.”

“This is a dangerous and sweeping attempt to control our bodies, our families, and our lives,” the ACLU said.

Liana Douillet Guzmán, CEO of FOLX Health, a digital health service provider offering care for LGBTQIA+ patients, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in a recent interview that she feared the Trump administration would move to block gender-affirming care for young people.

“I think about parents that I know who are furiously figuring out how they can retain their children's medical care in light of a Trump presidency and, you know, I think that puts the onus on the most marginalized among us,” she says.

The Human Rights Campaign, which has defended gender-affirming care, pledged to fight back against the executive order.“Everyone deserves the freedom to make deeply personal health care decisions for themselves and their families — no matter their income, zip code, or health coverage. But President Trump announced an executive order targeting health care for trans people under 19 — a disturbing attempt to put the federal government between families and their doctors,” the group posted on Facebook. 

Some hospitals and staff have been harassed and threatened for providing gender-affirming care to patients. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation released a report in 2022 that found 24 hospitals and healthcare providers were targeted in coordinated online harassment campaigns. Some providers eventually curbed services when state funding was threatened.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has previously defended gender-affirming care and said elected officials should not move to block such care.

In a 2023 statement, the academy said, “The AAP opposes any laws or regulations that discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse individuals, or that interfere in the doctor-patient relationship.”

The American Medical Association has also urged governors to block state laws that would prohibit gender-affirming care.

“Decisions about medical care belong within the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship,” the AMA wrote in a 2021 letter to the National Governors Association. “As with all medical interventions, physicians are guided by their ethical duty to act in the best interest of their patients and must tailor recommendations about specific interventions and the timing of those interventions to each patient’s unique circumstances.”

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have found surgical procedures on transgender youth are rarely performed.

In a study published in June 2024 by Jama Network Open, researchers found no surgeries performed on children 12 and under. For teens 15 to 17 years old, the rate of gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000, while the surgery rate for transgender adults 18 and over was 5.3 per 100,000. Most of the procedures were chest surgeries. Researchers examined data from 2019.

The executive order also includes TRICARE, the healthcare program covering the military, which also covers 2 million family members under the age of 18. The order directs the Defense Department to prohibit coverage for chemical or surgical gender treatments.