Vanderbilt Ends Adult Trans Surgeries, More Clinics Cut Trans Youth Care
Leading Off: A wave of clinic closures creep towards the erosion of adult transition care in the US, with transmasculine underwear also threatened with restrictions as trans people are targeted in all areas of life.
photo illustration by Aly Gibbs
by Assigned Media
Hospitals around the US are closing the doors on access to gender affirming care, capitulating to pressure from the Trump regime. Last Tuesday, NYU Langone ended all care for minors. This followed after the University of Utah, who abandoned patients whose care had been grandfathered in under their state’s ban on affirming care for youth. Numerous other institutions have discontinued care since January 2025, with STAT reporting at least 42 hospitals having ended care as of early February 2026; nine of them in the first few weeks of this year.
Families whose children have been successfully treated say their only alternatives were indefinite psychiatric hospitalization, which has known permanent harms, or even death by suicide. Families fortunate enough to live close to one of the remaining clinics, or those wealthy enough to travel great distances or even leave the country, remain able to access the only evidence-based treatment for gender dysphoria, at least for now. However, as closures mount, the spectre of a de-facto ban on treating youth for gender dysphoria hovers over even the luckiest trans children’s lives.
Concerningly, the trend of care cessation is not confined to youth. In Tennessee last Friday, Vanderbilt Hospital suddenly announced the end of gender affirming surgeries for adults. This was not the only adult surgical program to be terminated in recent weeks. While no official announcement has been made, UMass Memorial also reportedly canceled adult surgery appointments in early February, according to NECN. This too was not unprecedented, as Primary Health Care in Iowa ended all transition-related care, including hormone therapy for adults. (Planned Parenthood in Arizona similarly ended all care last year, then resumed it soon after, calling it a pause.)
The possibility of adults losing access to legal medical transition has been a concern among activists for years, but was widely dismissed by mainstream pundits. Last week, the Advocate reported that the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, spoke in favor of adult care bans. The Heritage Foundation is best known for creating Project 2025 and has been a major driving force behind the bans on care for trans youth.
In Oklahoma, legislators will consider a bill to ban medical transition for adults this year.
Affirming care bans are also becoming more expansive, including trans youth’s choice of underwear among the medical interventions under attack. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against the company Lola Olivia, which sells binders for transmasculine youth. Paxton alleges the sale of binders constitutes “false, misleading, or deceptive advertising.” The lawsuit seeks to penalize the clothing company for $1,000,000, citing health risks and damage to trans youth.
This attack on access to binders started in mid-december, when the FDA issued twelve warning letters to manufacturers of binders, claiming that they were improperly labeled and needed to be registered as medical devices with the FDA. An act that the law blog of Hyman, Phelps, & McNamara described as “unprecedented” for the type of violation the FDA asserts.
Throughout the lawsuit, Paxton misrepresents claims made by both WPATH and the FDA. The suit cites WPATH as advising that the use of binders “bears significant risk,” disregarding that this is mainly directed at homemade and improvised binders, and leaving out the later advisement that people use “binders specifically designed for the gender diverse population.”
Paxton references the letters sent by the FDA as being supportive of the lawsuit, which may be based on statements made prior to the letters’ sending by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. Makary accused binder manufacturers of “illegal marketing of these products for children,” and declaring that the letters of warning would be in regards to that. However, the letters themselves make no mention of illegal marketing or to children.
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