Children’s National Hospital to End GAC for Trans Kids
The D.C. area hospital is the latest to submit to Trump’s desire to abolish gender-affirming care in America by discontinuing their gender-affirming care program.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
In the emerging national tradition of capitulation to avoid punishment, D.C. pediatric hospital Children’s National has announced plans to discontinue gender-affirming care for trans youth starting August 30.
In a statement released on the front page of their website, Children’s National Hospital explained, “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.”
“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 statement goes on. “We know this change will have a significant impact on affected patients, families and staff. Our care teams are working directly with families of current patients to support them.”
Fret not, trans youth, you’ll still be able to access CNH’s mental health services… which you’re going to need, because they’ve decided to kowtow to a trans-hostile administration without even the faintest pretense of a struggle, and the life-saving medicines that radically improved your life will no longer be available to you.
CNH’s discontinuance of GAC for trans youth isn’t novel; they’re just the latest in a list of hospitals and clinics shuttering their doors to kids in need thanks to a sinister move from the Justice Department (now merely an appendage of oppression for President Trump), announced July 9, in which “more than 20 subpoenas” were issued to “doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.”
The statement claims the Justice Department is investigating “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”
Attorney General Pamela Bondi, perhaps the sveltest of the bottle blonde homunculi to claw its way to a position in the Trump administration after escaping the wretched cloning vats of Greater Florida, added: “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.”
To be clear: Nobody is or ever was mutilating children.
Gender affirming care is absolutely vital to the happiness and survival of trans kids who need it, and anybody who knows that knows that nobody’s kids are undergoing irreversible surgical procedures. The first quantitative study of its kind, published in JAMA Network Open (a monthly medical journal published by the American Medical Association, one of countless major medical associations that support GAC), revealed that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on trans youth 12 and younger in 2019, and that for teens aged 15 to 17, and adults aged 18 and older, the rate of gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively.
Perhaps one day the disaffected and mutilated cisgender children who briefly believed themselves to be transgender will speak up. For now, they have only Pam Bondi, and other hateful bigots in power like her, to speak up for them. Of course, when I say “speak up for them,” I mean wield the awesome powers of the executive branch to ruin countless innocent lives.
CNH’s Gender Development Program has been “supporting the gender needs of youth and their families” for 20 years, according to their website, “providing essential care at a time they need it most.” It’s shameful for them to abandon trans kids in an unprecedented time of need, without so much as a word in their defense. It’s an act of cowardice that I disavow in the strongest of terms. Those kids need and deserve healthcare, and it is my greatest hope that they (and every trans kid affected by these spineless surrenders) are able to find it elsewhere.
To that end, if you or somebody you know is losing access to gender-affirming healthcare as a result of losers bowing and scraping to the powers that be, check out Erin Reed’s informed consent clinic map to see if you can transition your transitional care to somewhere better before the well runs dry.
Alyssa Steinsiek (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
