Trump Signs Order to Restrict Medical Treatments for Transgender Children And Teens
President’s order withholds federal funding to institutions that provide the treatment
By Laura Kusisto The Wall Street Journal
President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that would restrict access to treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, for transgender children and teens.
Trump is directing federal agencies to take steps to withhold funding to institutions that provide common gender therapies to anyone under the age of 19 and exclude such treatments from health insurance coverage for members of the military and their families.
It also directs the Department of Health and Human Services to take whatever steps it can to restrict access to such care, including potentially by withholding Medicare and Medicaid funds.
The order stretches the limits of Trump’s ability to deliver on his promise to roll back the expansion of transgender rights that has happened in recent years. The regulation of medical care is mostly in the purview of the states, about half of which have already heavily restricted access to gender therapies for minors.
The executive order said the government has an obligation to protect young people from therapies that it says can have life-altering consequences. “Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the executive order says.
Advocates for transgender rights and major U.S. medical associations say that such treatments protect transgender youth from harm, including depression and suicide, that can stem from leaving their conditions untreated.
Write to Laura Kusisto at Laura.Kusisto@wsj.com
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Appeared in the January 29, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Order Curbs Transgender Treatment For Youths'.