The Trump administration has moved to end federal funding for hospitals that perform so-called “gender-affirming” medical procedures on minors, fulfilling a key campaign promise to protect children from irreversible harm.
Under new rules issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), any facility that provides puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or sex-reassignment surgeries to minors will lose eligibility to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The policy also blocks Medicaid’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from funding these procedures for anyone under 19—impacting a program that serves millions of children nationwide.
At a recent news conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration—based on an HHS peer-reviewed report—finding that these sex-rejecting medical 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.
Claims data show that nearly 14,000 minors received sex-rejecting medical procedures between 2019 and 2023.
Secretary Kennedy warned that “gender-affirming” treatments carry serious risks, including infertility and reduced bone density. Rather than rushing children toward permanent medical harm, the HHS report recommends psychotherapy as a safer and more appropriate response to gender distress. His opening remarks are included in the short video clip below.
Perhaps the most compelling moment of the news conference came from Chloe Cole, a young woman who de-transitioned after being placed on puberty blockers and undergoing an irreversible double mastectomy at just 15 years old. Now older and more informed, she is traveling the country sharing her story and urging Americans to speak out against these procedures being performed on children.
Cole does not mince words. She calls what happened to her “child abuse” and “medical experimentation.” The political Left, by contrast, labels these interventions “gender-affirming care”—a term that encompasses puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures intended to alter a person’s body to resemble the opposite sex. In her remarks, she explains:
I represent a community of people who have been harmed by these procedures, and yet largely are ignored by the same doctors, the same clinics and medical system that have harmed us. I’ve become an advocate for protecting children from what is often mistakenly referred to as “gender affirming care” because it is by no means care, but unscientific medical abuse that violates every tenet of medical ethics.
This ideology is festering at an unimaginable scale within our hospital systems, our culture, our communities, and to many, within our own families. For me, it started with being lied to about who I was by adults outside of my family. I was made to feel that the way that God beautifully made me was in fact a mistake. A mistake that could only be “fixed” by so-called modern medicine.
The entirety of her remarks are included in the short video clip below.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., both participated in the news conference in support of proposed federal rules that would bar hospitals providing radical and irreversible gender-reassignment treatments to minors from receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Dr. Oz emphasized that “children deserve our protection—not experimental interventions that carry life-altering risks and lack reliable evidence of benefit.” He went on to say:
This proposal seeks to clarify that hospitals participating in our programs cannot conduct these unproven procedures on children. CMS will ensure that federal program standards reflect our responsibility to promote the health and safety of children.
In his remarks, Dr. Oz underscored both the permanent harm caused by these interventions and the powerful financial incentives driving them. Procedures such as vaginoplasties and phalloplasties can cost tens—sometimes hundreds—of thousands of dollars per child, a reality he condemned as shameful profiteering that will no longer be subsidized by taxpayers. The entirety of his remarks are included in the short video clip below.
HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill spoke the truth plainly, saying what needs to be said repeated:
“Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men.”
He pointed out that the proposed rule would “restore regulatory clarity and ensure that organizations receiving federal funds can set evidence-based policies without fear of violating federal civil rights requirements.” You can watch his comments in the short video clip below:
Also speaking at this news conference was Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D. director of the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s medical research agency. In his remarks, Dr. Bhattacharya calls the medical interventions on gender confused children “a dark episode in medical history.” He went on to say:
The hijacking of scientific institutions, the hijacking of scientific journals for the purpose of essentially enforcing group think is tremendously powerful. We saw this during the pandemic, and we’ve seen this in this episode today, that the idea about whether you need to have extraordinary interventions to halt the puberty of a child in order to prevent them from committing suicide.
The idea behind all these procedures was a false idea propagated first by science, by scientists, essentially asserting that the answer to that question, yes, if you don’t let your child transition, they’re more likely to commit suicide, that the answer to that question is yes. When in fact, there was never any solid scientific evidence for that question.
The entirety of his remarks are included in the short video clip below.
The new policy direction follows a Department of Health and Human Services review concluding that these interventions pose serious risks, including infertility, impaired sexual function, reduced bone density, altered brain development, and lasting psychological harm.
President Trump initiated these changes through an executive order signed shortly after taking office. At the announcement, detransitioner Chloe Cole offered a sobering reminder of the real-world consequences of these practices—urging policymakers to protect children so others are not subjected to the harm she endured.
As expected, these new rules will almost certainly be challenged in court. Left-wing advocacy organizations, including the ACLU, have already vowed to fight the measures. In the meantime, HHS will open a public comment period—60 to 90 days for the proposed funding restrictions, and 30 days for the proposal to remove gender dysphoria’s classification as a disability—before issuing final rules.
We should also pray—for moral clarity, for courage among our leaders, and for the wisdom to protect children rather than sacrifice them to ideology or profit.
