HHS and Dr. Oz put several hospitals on notice that they will assess their compliance with new federal rules against surgically or chemically 'transitioning' children.
(LifeSiteNews) – The Trump administration put several hospitals on notice that it will assess their compliance with new federal rules against surgically or chemically “transitioning” gender-confused children.
Within days of returning to office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the federal government “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” the medical “transitioning” of gender-confused minors, “and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” the practice. In March, HHS’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began putting hospitals on notice to comply with the new rules, and last month HHS published a report detailing the “significant risks” of transitioning minors.
On May 28, CMS announced that it sent a letter to an unspecified number of unidentified hospitals seeking, within 30 days, detailed explanations of their informed consent procedures and parental involvement therein, any planned updates to clinical guidelines that factor in the administration’s review of the evidence, documentation requirements for adverse transition outcomes, and comprehensive financial information pertaining to their “sex trait modifications” that would help determine whether Medicare was still being billed for such services.
“These are irreversible, high-risk procedures being conducted on vulnerable children, often at taxpayer expense,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz declared. “Hospitals accepting federal funds are expected to meet rigorous quality standards and uphold the highest level of stewardship when it comes to public resources — we will not turn a blind eye to procedures that lack a solid foundation of evidence and may result in lifelong harm.”
Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Ethics & Public Policy Center’s Person and Identity Project, told Catholic News Agency that the letter is meant to determine “what medical interventions have you performed on confused kids, how much money are you making from it, and how are those kids faring,” because many hospitals have “done a terrible job following up on how kids are faring.”
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with a 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
