Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that doctors who practiced “so-called gender affirming care” have “inflicted lasting, physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine. It is malpractice.”
During a press conference Thursday morning at the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy heads, he and other health leaders with the Trump administration announced federal restrictions to hinder the practice of sex change procedures, which include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical operations, in the U.S.
Kennedy said he signed a declaration stating that “sex rejecting procedures are neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria.” Hospitals that participate in Medicaid or Medicare and continue to practice the surgery will be out of compliance with the federal health care code.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also noted that hospitals that continue offering these procedures could lose eligibility to participate in federal health programs, and that federal Medicaid and CHIP funds would be barred as payment for sex-transition procedures for minors, effectively ending taxpayers’ funding for the treatments.
As many as 27 states already don’t provide Medicaid coverage for sex-transition procedures on children.
“We don’t provide health care to every child, but at 53% we’ve got most,“ Oz said. ”We know that inflicting these procedures on young people costs them and the Medicaid system countless dollars, not just in medical bills, but also all kinds of downstream issues, while providers reap the rewards.”
“We are in a weird place in America where we have mixed politics and medicine. And you know what you get when you mix politics and medicine? Politics. There is no medicine left,” he continued. “Under politicized medicine, people suffer long-term consequences.”
The proposed regulatory actions announced Thursday are to carry out an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January, ordering HHS to ban sex-changing medical procedures on children.
Steps were also made to reverse Biden-era policies that classified gender dysphoria as a disability under federal law. The federal government is revising Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to exclude gender dysphoria that does not result from physical impairments.
“The Biden administration abused a law that was never intended to require health care providers or health programs to support transgender surgeries for minors,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said. “Our 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.”
The Food and Drug Administration is also taking action by “sending warning letters to 12 manufacturers and retailers for illegal marketing of breast binders for children for the purposes of treating gender dysphoria,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in the conference. “Breast binders are a class one medical device with legitimate medical users, such as being used by women after breast cancer surgery, and these binders are not benign. Long-term usage has been associated with pain, compromised lung function from atelectasis, collapse and even difficulty breastfeeding later in life.”
Personal accounts shape the debate
A day before the press conference, transgender Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., gave an emotional speech to cameras outside the U.S. Capitol regarding the struggles of growing up as a boy.
“I get it’s hard to understand what it feels like to be trans. I get that it is hard to understand what it feels like to be me. I get that it’s hard to understand this care and understand the need for it. But one of the things that gets so lost in this conversation is that the transgender adults of today were kids once,” McBride said. The representative didn’t begin identifying as a transgender woman until age 21.
“I never had a childhood without that pain. I marvel at the courage of transgender young people today who are sharing themselves with their families and this world, despite the toxicity and the hate that too often emanates from the building behind me and for politicians within it. All any of us want is to live a life of purpose and happiness and wholeness,” McBride added.
American activist Chloe Cole, who was prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone at 13 years old and had her breasts removed at 15, feels differently.
“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,” Cole said during Thursday’s press conference. The doctors, she said, “affirmed my childish misgivings,” convincing her that she “wasn’t just a tomboy,” but was actually “a boy who just so happened to be born in a girl’s body.”
She detransitioned at 16 and has been speaking out ever since.
“The only thing in the world that makes me angrier is knowing that this is continuing to happen to children all across the United States and throughout the globe,” she added. “I chose to face the world and sound the alarm on what is happening to my generation, both in the hopes that this would set forth the movements of young people who chose to break free from ideology, and also that one day no child would ever have to speak up about this ever again.”
“And to the young people out there who are struggling with this mental illness, I want you to know that there is a better way out, and it’s not too late to accept the beautiful way that God has created you.”