The White House on Monday celebrated reports that some hospitals have stopped providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth in response to an executive order that threatens their federal support.
“Hospitals around the country are taking action to downsize or eliminate their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ programs,” the White House said in a news release on Monday.
It claimed doctors practicing transgender health care had “maimed and sterilized” children and perpetuated “a radical, false claim that they can somehow change a child’s sex.”
President Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order meant to broadly restrict access to transition-related care for minors, which the order says includes children and teenagers up to 19 years old. Among other provisions, the order directs federal agency heads to block government funding for medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, that provide puberty blockers, hormones and surgery to youth.
Hospital systems across the country responded by suspending gender-affirming treatment while they evaluated Trump’s order, which could disrupt care for more than 300,000 transgender minors nationwide.
“We are working to understand and comply with the full implications of the broadly worded order,” said a notice from Denver Health, which added that changes to patients’ medical care are “being handled privately.”