Throughout the U.S., hospitals are ceasing to provide transgender treatments for minors. Two major clinics include the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which is the largest public provider of such treatments, and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.
The Los Angeles center, called the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, closed July 22. It was one of the longest-run transgender youth centers in the U.S.
Children’s National Hospital recently announced that it will stop providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone prescriptions to its patients. Prescriptions will end on Aug. 30, the hospital revealed.
“In light of escalating legal and regulatory risks to Children’s National, our providers, and the families we serve, we will be discontinuing the prescription of gender-affirming medications,” the hospital’s website states. “ … Mental health and other support services for LGBT patients remain available. You are always welcome at Children’s National for your other medical needs.”
The treatments were provided through their Gender Development Program, the first of its kind, according to the website.
The University of Chicago Medicine announced on July 18 that it would no longer provide such care for minors. In June, Stanford Medicine paused providing transgender surgeries for those under 19. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center also publicized that it would end puberty blockers and hormone therapy for individuals 18 and under.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January mandating that taxes cannot fund the transitioning of minors. Soon after, Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., announced an initial pause of such prescriptions, although the executive order was blocked temporarily by a federal district judge.
On July 9, more than 20 subpoenas were sent to transgender treatment providers by the Justice Department.
In a statement, Attorney General Pamela Bondi warned that “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.”
Recent reports have indicated the serious risk of such unproven treatments for minors, including one recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“These interventions carry risk of significant harms,” the HHS report warns, “including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret.”
Decision Magazine, founded by Billy Graham in 1960, works through its website and monthly magazine to communicate the Gospel, as well as inform and challenge readers about key cultural and Biblical issues.
Editor’s Note: ‘God’s Design For Us Is Either Male Or Female’
Answers In Genesis Founder and CEO, Ken Ham, recently highlighted “the gender madness” sweeping through many Western cultures, calling it “nothing short of horrific child abuse.”
“Children, who are highly susceptible to suggestion and peer influence, are having the seeds of gender confusion planted in preschool, watered through social media pages (such as TikTok), and then that seed blooms as their peers begin to ‘come out’ as trans,” he wrote. “These children and teens then go on to take puberty blockers or have ‘trans-affirming’ surgeries that mutilate their bodies and permanently sterilize them. It’s horrifying, and the fallout will be enormous and so costly to the individuals swept away in this madness.”
“God’s design for us is either male or female (Genesis 1:27). Rejecting that truth and instead creating themselves in their own image rather than recognizing God has made them in his image, they have experienced devastating, tragic, and often lifelong consequences,” Ham underscored. “Help your children to understand the truth by teaching them that they are created by God, not created by themselves. Show them how God’s Word gives us the basis for our identity—male and female, made in God’s very image. Explain to them how the gospel is the answer to our pain and suffering, not body-mutilating surgeries to try to make our bodies match with our minds. Help them understand that what we feel is not always the truth (after all, our hearts are sinful and they lie to us), rather it’s God’s unchanging Word that is truth. Above all, pray for your children. Pray that God will use the seeds of truth you plant in their minds as you help them trust the Lord and develop a biblical worldview to protect them from our enemy who seeks to devour each of them.”
