Just over seven months into the president’s second term, and despite fervent demonstrations from a dwindling number of public supporters, gender-affirming care for trans youth is disappearing from hospitals across the country at an accelerating rate.

In the past two weeks alone, at least six major medical institutions have ended gender-affirming care for young people amid multiple financial and legal ultimatums from the federal government that threaten the hospitals’ survival.  

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The agency says it will “gauge the harm “consumers may have experienced from “false or unsupported claims” about gender-affirming care.

There was momentary hope in March that the programs might be spared, following a judge’s order halting the president’s January executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

But following the Supreme Court’s Skrmetti decision in May allowing Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care to stand, providers across the country came to grips with multiple attacks: threats to end vital federal funding for hospitals (in the form of frozen grants and Medicare and state Medicaid participation); possible investigations and legal proceedings against hospitals for “forcing” doctors and nurses to perform gender-affirming care, and proceedings against medical providers themselves; as well as a legal landscape newly hostile to the rights of trans youth and their families as they navigate medical decisions in the face of government scrutiny.

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The latest onslaught against trans medical rights is an effort by the Federal Trade Commission to claim that hospitals defrauded patients and their families about the effectiveness of gender-affirming care.

Not all providers have caved to the pressure though.

Boston’s Children’s Hospital, which founded the country’s first pediatric and adolescent trans health program and has endured intimidation amid a relentless right-wing pressure campaign to close its doors, remains open and resolute.

“We are here to affirm, uplift, and advocate for transgender and gender diverse youth,” the hospital said in a statement last week, “and we remain committed to doing all we can to support their care and well-being.”

Among the hospitals that have been forced to end their gender-affirming care programs for trans youth recently are the following.

• University of Chicago Medicine ended gender-affirming care “effective immediately” on July 18.

• Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, indefinitely “paused” hormonal care for new patients under 18 on July 16. 

• California-based Kaiser Permanente, which serves patients in eight states, ended care on July 23, citing “significant risks” imposed by the current presidential administration.

• Stanford Medicine in California indefinitely “paused” gender-related surgical procedures for patients under 19 on June 2.  

• Yale New Haven Hospital discontinued hormone-based gender-affirming care for patients under 19 on July 23.

• Virginia Commonwealth University Health announced it will no longer provide gender-affirming care to patients under age 19 on July 29.

• University of Illinois Health announced it has ended gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth effective August 1.

• Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC said in July it will end gender-affirming care for its patients on August 30.

• The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, the largest program of its kind in the country, shut down completely on July 22.

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