Young NYC Trans Patients Face a Limbo With Devastating Implications
A series of interviews conducted by Assigned Media reveals that even a step forward in resuming care is accompanied by major limitations and ongoing anxiety.
by Lana Leonard
Young trans people and their parents face a daunting and ever-shifting health care landscape in New York City, leaving them uncertain from one week to the next what the future holds, parents and trans leaders told Assigned Media in a series of interviews this week.
“It's hard for kids to exist in the world, hard for kids to learn at school when they don't feel loved, safe and seen,” said Alaina Daniels, an educator and activist who is helping a number of the parents.
Several major city hospitals have acquiesced to President Trump’s discriminatory Jan. 28 executive order by pausing or canceling care for transgender youth patients, despite the legality of his decree being challenged in the courts.
One of them, NYU Langone, assured State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez this week that it was resuming gender care appointments, but even those patients still face limitations and worries, the interviews revealed. And NYU Langone, like other institutions fearful of crossing the Trump administration, has done nothing publicly and little behind the scenes to clarify.
Since “my child started treatment and had a prescription written prior to the executive order, we can continue care, but I don't know when that's going to change,” said Raina Bien, a parent of a trans youth who is an NYU Langone patient. “NYU’s gone back and forth so many times since the executive order dropped, and even the doctor, very cautiously, always says to me: ‘care is safe for now.’”
NYU Langone has not responded to repeated queries from Assigned Media seeking clarification of its protocols.
Three other parents told Assigned Media that young trans patients at NYU Langone are still waiting for rescheduled appointments or are being blocked from advancing care beyond their current stage. For example, they said, a youth being prescribed medication for gender dysphoria to stop puberty ahead of medical transition is not being allowed to advance to hormones aligning with their gender identity.
That means a young person would be delaying puberty well into their teen years or be forced to sustain a puberty that doesn’t align with their identity. The unclear path to continued care has detrimental effects on trans youths’ mental and physical health that exacerbate gender dysphoria.
Bien said the implications are insidious and far-ranging.
The care these youths are getting is “recommended as a form of treatment by every major medical association in America (that doesn’t have a political agenda),” Bien said in an email message. By refusing to provide necessary care to patients NYU Langone is “sending the message that gender affirming care is non-essential health care.”
Bien called this an “incredibly irresponsible” and "destructive" act.
Stopping care for youth adds to the "perpetually ongoing impacts on mental health, on physical health, on ability to exist in the world, [and] in public spaces," said Daniels, the executive director of Trans formative Schools, which provides education and support for trans youths. "It makes it hard to learn, and it's hard to learn when you don't feel comfortable in your body."
This experience is not isolated to NYU Langone, says Bien. From big institutions to small clinics, providers are capitulating to Trump’s demands to deny care to people under 19. In New York City, Mt. Sinai and New York Presbyterian Hospitals had also reportedly halted care in response to Trump’s executive order, leading to at least one lawsuit.
As parents scramble to seek out quality health care for their trans kids, they said they are watching anxiously for potential insurance denials.
The lingering uncertainty reflects how young trans patients have become ensnared in a highly charged political environment in which the White House has blatantly promoted anti-trans bigotry, and institutions are fearful of crossing him.
Universities, hospitals and even states have faced threats from Trump that federal funding would be unilaterally pulled if they did not bend to his will, and many have shied from directly challenging him in public.
Parents say they have been in talks with the state attorney general’s office for support.
In February, Attorney General Letitia James issued a letter to hospitals stating that refusing care to trans individuals, while continuing care to cisgender people, would constitute discrimination under state law.
The attorney general’s office told Assigned Media on Friday that it’s been clear with all providers that their legal obligations under state law take precedence over any federal directive threatening to pull grants in jeopardy. James and a coalition of 22 state attorneys general went to court and won a restraining order in February barring Trump from pulling funding as retaliation.
Ultimately, anti-trans bias exists, Bien says, and the “what-ifs” of that bias are overwhelming. Families don’t know if a doctor is going to fight hard for every trans child, or if they will have to relocate, or seek care from outside of the country. Kids grow-up fast, and many do not have the privilege of time on their side.
For the last two years, Lana Leonard has reported on New Jersey school board politics and the implications for Policy 5756 for Out in Jersey Magazine. Leonard is also the associate of education & advocacy at the GLAAD Media Institute, the organization’s training, research and consulting division. Read more about their work here.