The transgender lunacy is coming to an end, as Trump promised, and he’s only been the president for a little more than a week.
He began on day one, by making it official government policy to recognize only two biological sexes, male and female.
Next, on Monday, he ordered men out of women’s spaces and abolished gender ideology in the military.
And now, Trump has signed the most consequential executive order so far, to end the “chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” aka “gender-affirming care.”
“Across the country,” yesterday’s order states, “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
These transgender interventions are a relatively recent medical development. As we explained here, in the past, when a child presented with gender dysphoria, doctors “watched and waited,” cautiously allowing the patient to progress through puberty naturally while treating them with counseling and psychotherapy rather than sex-altering drugs.
But several years ago—based on evidence that has been challenged as politically motivated, fraudulent, and misleading—doctors tossed aside that traditional protocol. They now follow an aggressive, no-questions-asked policy of “affirming” a child’s stated desire to change genders by prescribing puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.
The President’s directive orders the Secretary of HHS to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children, including regulatory and sub-regulatory actions.”
And it ends federal funding for these transgender treatments.
From the EO:
The head of each executive department or agency (agency) that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, shall, consistent with applicable law and in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.
The EO also requires the enforcement of laws banning transgender treatments for minors and laws against female genital mutilation.
Reaching beyond funding and enforcement, the order addresses detransitioner lawsuits, conflicts created by “sanctuary states,” and the shoddy evidence behind transgender “care”—all topics we’ve covered here. The full statement is embedded at the end of the post.
A key provision directs the Dept. of Justice to work with Congress to create a private right of action for detransitioners and their parents, including a lengthy statute of limitations to give them time to sue the doctors who maimed and mutilated them. Detransitioners are the children, typically with a host of emotional problems, who later come to regret the decisions the adults convinced them to make before they were old enough to make them, and after the irreversible damage was done. We covered two of these high-stakes lawsuits here.
Another section slams the activist World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), long the go-to source for advocates of “gender-affirming care.” The organization’s credibility has been shot by revelations its policies were driven by politics, not the scientific method.
Yesterday’s directive ends reliance on WPATH’s “junk science” throughout the federal government:
Sec. 3. Ending Reliance on Junk Science. (a) The blatant harm done to children by chemical and surgical mutilation cloaks itself in medical necessity, spurred by guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which lacks scientific integrity. In light of the scientific concerns with the WPATH guidance:(i) agencies shall rescind or amend all policies that rely on WPATH guidance, including WPATH’s “Standards of Care Version 8”; and(ii) within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.(b) The Secretary of HHS, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall use all available methods to increase the quality of data to guide practices for improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation.
Until now, the United States lagged behind Europe and a host of other countries that have already reversed course on transgender treatments for minors. We were “out of date” said Hilary Cass, the leader of the UK’s landmark review that found the evidence to support gender-affirming care “remarkably weak.” Those findings prompted a soul-searching abroad, but were stubbornly disregarded by the medical establishment here. Yesterday’s EO leaves still leaves much of the work to be carried out by Congress and the federal agencies. But for now, Trump has done all that he can, and all that he promised, to bring this “stain on our Nation’s history” to an end.
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