Trump Administration Announces New Rules Targeting Care for Transgender Youth |
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This story was originally published by The 19th.
Trump administration officials on Thursday announced new proposed regulations targeting gender-affirming care for youth, part of a larger push from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to restrict such care.
One of the new proposed rules would ban hospitals that provide gender affirming care to youth under 18 from receiving Medicaid and Medicare funds. Another proposed rule would bar Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care for youth under 18 and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from covering such care for youth under 19.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with other officials, formally announced the proposed rules at an event on Thursday morning. In his remarks, Kennedy cast gender affirming care as “sex-rejecting” procedures that impose “lasting harm” on children.
“This is not medicine. It is malpractice,” Kennedy said. “We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”
Gender-affirming care for youth, backed by major medical organizations to treat gender dysphoria, varies depending on the patient’s age and circumstances. For those entering adolescence, providers can prescribe puberty blockers, which temporarily halt hormones causing puberty and are also prescribed to cisgender youth who undergo early puberty. Research has shown that puberty blockers significantly reduce depression and risk of suicide in trans and non-binary youth and that gender-affirming care also reduces depression in transgender adults.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy group, said in a statement Thursday........