Children’s hospitals suspend youth transgender programs after Trump order

Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “paused prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone therapy” for transgender-identifying youth there in response to a Trump directive. / Credit: Daquella manera|Wikipedia|CC BY 2.0

CNA Staff, Feb 3, 2025 / 12:50 pm (CNA).

Several hospitals have suspended child transgender programs after the Trump administration moved to restrict what the White House describes as the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of young people. 

President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order restricting transgender surgeries and drugs for youth, with the president vowing that the United States “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” the controversial procedures.

Among other measures, the order directs that every federal agency that offers “research or educational grants” to medical institutions must ensure that those institutions are not administering transgender drugs to, or performing transgender procedures on, youth.

On Thursday the Associated Press reported that multiple major hospitals throughout the U.S. have paused some of those medical practices following the White House’s order. 

Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “paused prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone therapy” for transgender-identifying youth there in response to the directive, the news wire reported. The hospital “already did not perform gender-affirming surgery on minors.”

Farther south, the health system at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond both paused medication and surgeries for minors who believe they are the opposite sex. 

Denver Health in Colorado has likewise paused “gender-affirming surgeries,” the wire said. 

Some other hospitals indicated to AP that they would continue offering those procedures for now. Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital said after Trump’s order it was “assessing any potential impact to the clinical services we offer to our patient families.”

The White House order last week also moved to end the use of what it calls “junk science” promoted by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). 

That organization has come under fire for endorsing what critics have called the “pseudoscience” of transgenderism, with an internal leak last year revealing its members admitting that children are too young to fully understand the consequences of such procedures. 

The president last week also issued an order to end “radical gender ideology” in the military, reversing former President Joe Biden’s directive that allowed soldiers who identify as transgender to serve in the armed forces.