The Trump administration is definitely on a roll. Last month the LA Children’s hospital announced that it would be shutting down the largest gender-affirming care clinic in the United States, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development. Then a week ago Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC made a similar announcement. This week several more hospitals and medical groups have followed suit.
Connecticut Children’s Medical Center confirmed Wednesday it is shutting down the program that provides gender-affirming health care to transgender and gender-diverse patients.
In a statement that closely echoes an internal memo hospital leadership sent to employees a few days ago, CCMC referred obliquely to pressure from the Trump administration and indicated the hospital struggled with the decision.
“In recent months, we have been carefully reviewing the long-term sustainability of our gender care program in light of an increasingly complex and evolving landscape. After thoughtful consideration and guidance from medical and legal experts, we have made the difficult decision to begin winding down this program for patients under the age of 19. This process is being carried out in a deliberate and planful way, with ongoing communication and support for the families and team members directly involved. It continues to be an evolving and fluid situation,” the statement reads, which was attributed to President and CEO Jim Shmerling.
A day later, Yale New Haven Health, which is Connecticut’s largest health system, issued a similar statement.
Yale New Haven Health will no longer provide medication treatment as part of its gender-affirming care services for patients 19 and under, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday morning…
While there are other providers of medication treatment for children in the state, the cancellation of these programs at the two largest pediatric hospitals in Connecticut is sure to have an impact on the availability of services for the populations they serve.
The Yale health system made the decision after “carefully monitoring federal executive orders and administrative actions” relating to gender-affirming care for children, wrote the spokesperson in a statement provided to The Connecticut Mirror.
And in Chicago:
The University of Chicago Medical Center ended its gender-affirming care for minors last week, becoming the latest Chicago hospital to bow to federal pressure over it…
“We reached this conclusion in light of emerging federal actions which would place at risk our ability to care for all Medicare or Medicaid patients,” the statement reads. “These patients make up the majority of those we serve.”
But the biggest blow to gender affirming care this week came from Kaiser Permanente which is based in Oakland but operates in 8 states.
Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente, which serves more than 12 million people across eight states, said Wednesday it would stop offering surgical gender-affirming treatments for trans minors next month, citing “significant risks” created by the current legal and regulatory environment surrounding care for transgender children.
“Since January, there has been significant focus by the federal government on gender-affirming care, specifically for patients under the age of 19,” the health care provider said in a statement, citing a January executive order from President Donald Trump threatening funding for medical centers that provide such care, changes to insurance coverage and ongoing federal investigations.
State Sen. Scott Wiener is hoping to pressure state AG Bonta to force these medical providers back into offering these services to minors.
“It’s important for us not to just cave in to Donald Trump’s bullying,” he told KQED on Wednesday. “It’s hard and it’s scary, but this is how fascists succeed — when institutions start backing down.”
Wiener said the next step for the state’s politicians will be to put pressure on Bonta’s office to enforce California law, which bars hospitals from refusing to provide health care to trans people.
“I don’t want the state to have to fight with Kaiser or with Stanford or with any of our great health systems, but we have to enforce the law,” he said.
He can certainly try but AG Bonta already tried this gambit with LA’s Children’s hospital. When the hospital original planned to shutter the Transyouth Center in February, Bonta sent a threatening letter and they reversed course. But that only lasted for a few months. As mentioned above, they reversed course again and shut the center down last month. So at this point threatening letters from AG Bonta look pretty toothless. If he was going to go beyond threats he’d already have done so in Los Angeles.
Gender Affirming Care is really on the ropes at this point. Major medical groups and hospitals are abandoning it because the exposure from government and from lawsuits is too great. Expect to see even more announcements from remaining providers soon.
