Introduction
Kayla Lovdahl was twelve years old when her parents sought help for her severe depression, mood swings, self-harm, nausea, gender dysphoria, and explosive, irritable behavior. Kayla’s mother told doctors that bipolar disorder runs in her family—but when Kayla mentioned her interest in adult transgender influencers on social media and expressed discomfort about her sex, surgeons at Kaiser Permanente placed her on puberty blockers and testosterone. Six months later, the doctors surgically amputated both of Kayla’s healthy breasts after a mere 75-minute mental evaluation.
Kayla’s story is just one of many that the left ignores as it continues to push children into “gender-affirming care”: a simple phrase for the harmful chemical and surgical interventions administered to individuals struggling with gender dysphoria.
Fighting Back
In January 2025, President Trump opened his second term with a commitment to rid the nation of the tyranny of so-called “gender-affirming care.” While the Biden-era consensus effectively told children that they could never be good enough without going under a surgeon’s knife, President Trump kicked off his domestic agenda with an opposite message to American children in his 2025 State of the Union Address: “You are perfect exactly the way God made you.”
Reversing course following the Biden Administration, however, is no small task for the President. Sex-denying medical malpractice and psychiatric negligence for the sake of “transgender inclusivity” is a sacred cow in mainstream culture, and “LGBTQ+” organizations, drug manufacturers, and plastic surgeons maintain a firm grip on their power, money, and influence. But turning the tide is possible, and it must begin with acknowledging the damage that has been done.
Out of twenty-eight total lawsuits for wrongful death and medical malpractice against “gender affirming care” providers, twenty-one remain pending in the United States. Doctors from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Kaiser Permanente Medical Group make up a significant portion of defendants, and almost every victim is a female seeking justice for nightmarish butchery at the hands of doctors who rushed them without informed consent into irreversible, life-altering gender transition procedures.
Chloe Cole was thirteen when she was dealt cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers and given a double mastectomy.
Prisha Mosley, who lives with a disability, was a suicidal teenager when her doctor administered testosterone and removed her breasts.
Luka Hein was sixteen years old when doctors amputated her breasts after she presented with severe depression and panic anxiety disorder.
After suffering a manic episode, Soren Aldaco, an autistic, depressed teenager, self-administered off-label doses of cross-sex hormones from a doctor she met at a support group.
These are just a few of the alleged “gender-affirming care” related lawsuits that may see their day in court. Countless children and teens suffer from the same abuses by providers who took advantage of their immaturity, insecurity, and genuine mental health crises under the reckless guise of “gender-affirming care.” The simple truth is that doctors are profiting from the intentional sterilization, castration, and permanent genital mutilation of youth—a group generally not considered mature enough to drink alcohol, enter contracts, get tattoos, or consent to sexual activity.
Policy Timeline
Since swearing in, President Trump has taken concrete steps to force an end to child mutilation and medical malpractice at hospitals and “gender clinics.” Here is a timeline outlining each step:
January 28, 2025: President Trump’s Executive Order Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation 1) directs federal agencies to strip their departments of any programs related to child sex-change operations and 2) orders the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense to withdraw federal funding from any hospital, TRICARE provider, and research institution administering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or sex-change surgeries to children under the age of 19.
May 1, 2025: HHS releases Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices, an almost three-hundred-page comprehensive report dedicated to assessing “gender-affirming care”: sex-change surgeries (mastectomy, vaginoplasty), puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The report finds that these interventions are administered without “objective physical, imaging, or laboratory markers,” instead given to children based on “attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that are known to fluctuate during adolescence.” Further, the report finds that the “gender-affirming care” model is medically unsound, causes irreversible harm, and can lead to a host of life-altering mental and physical disorders.
June 18, 2025: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold Tennessee’s statewide ban on gender transition drugs and surgeries for minors in United States v. Skrmetti, finding that the prohibition does not violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and may be implemented in any state across the country.
July 9, 2025: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoenas more than 20 doctors and clinics involved in performing sex-change surgeries on minors. With the subpoenas, the DOJ announces that they are investigating the providers for health care fraud, “warped ideology,” and child mutilation.
August 15, 2025: The U.S. Office of Personnel and Management announces that the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) and Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) programs will no longer cover “gender-affirming care” for federal employees.
Expected Soon: A soon-to-be-announced pending rule change at HHS will seek to defund all “gender-affirming” drugs and surgeries from Medicaid.
Hospital and Provider Closures
As of March 2025, 27 states have enacted laws to protect children from the harm of so-called “gender affirming care.” As a result, many providers in these states have had to curtail their activity. President Trump’s federal actions and the reality of potential lawsuits are prompting the closure or downsizing of numerous “gender-affirming care” providers:
February 1, 2025: New York University Langone Health cancelled appointments for minors.
February 4, 2025: Seattle Children’s Hospital cancelled appointments for minors.
February 6, 2025: Boston Children’s Hospital cancelled appointments for minors.
February 10, 2025: Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago halted all “gender-affirming care” services for minors: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender transition surgeries.
February 10, 2025: Phoenix Children’s Hospital paused cross-sex hormone prescriptions for minors.
April 4, 2025: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center ended “gender-affirming care” services for patients under 19.
April 7, 2025: Penn State Children’s Hospital ended gender transition surgeries for patients under 18.
April 24, 2025: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta ended “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
May 6, 2025: El Rio Community Health Center stopped filling hormone prescriptions for minors.
May 21, 2025: University of Utah Gender Management and Support Clinic announced closure.
May 29, 2025: Penn Medicine ended gender transition surgeries for patients under 18.
July 9, 2025: Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware ended “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
June 11, 2025: Missoula, Montana, Community Medical Center ended “gender-affirming care” services for patients under 18.
July 15, 2025: Rush University Medical Center of Chicago ended “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
June 15, 2025: Stanford Medicine ended gender transition surgeries for patients under 19.
July 18, 2025: University of Chicago Medicine ended “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
July 21, 2025: Children’s National Hospital, Washington, D.C., halted all pediatric “gender-affirming care.”
July 22, 2025: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Center for Trans Youth Health and Development announced closure.
July 23, 2025: Connecticut Children’s Medical Center announced “winding down” “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
July 23, 2025: Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital ended “gender-affirming care” services for patients under 19.
July 29, 2025: Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond ended “gender-affirming care” services for patients under 19.
July 31, 2025: University of Illinois Health ended gender transition surgeries for patients under 19.
August 25, 2025: Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan ended “gender-affirming care” services for minors.
August 28, 2025: Advocate Health Care of Illinois ends “gender-affirming care” medication prescriptions at 11 hospitals and 200 clinics in Illinois.
August 29, 2025: Kaiser Permanente no longer covers, insures, and facilitates pediatric gender transition surgeries.
September 2, 2025: Tacoma Children’s Hospital no longer prescribes puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to patients.
Four entities closed briefly after President Trump’s February EO but have since reopened: Denver Health, University of Virginia Health, Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Virginia, and Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Conclusion
These closures are worth celebrating, but we are under no illusions: “gender-affirming care” providers are responding to fiscal pressure from the White House and the threat of multi-million-dollar lawsuits. We have no doubt that if a new President were to take the White House who supports a return to sex-rejecting procedures on minors as the previous administration did, many of these providers would happily resume profiting from mutilating children.
But we can be encouraged. Truth is winning. Americans are waking up to the idea that genital mutilation should not be classified or covered as healthcare; that experimental puberty blockers do more harm than good; that the chemical castration of confused pre-teens and teens is not compassionate; and that amputating the healthy breasts of girls struggling with their identity is not “affirmation”—it is butchery. “Gender-affirming care” doesn’t solve mental health and identity crises; it worsens them.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) believes all children are beautifully created—male and female—in the image of God, and we are committed to continued efforts to end the abuses of “gender-affirming care” in the United States. As a women’s public policy organization, we are especially concerned about the accentuated impact of online gender and identity manipulation and irreversible genital mutilation on our daughters. In her explosive book Irreversible Damage, journalist Abigail Shrier has documented the staggering extent of the disproportionate impact of gender ideology on young girls.
Every woman and girl has a right to an unmedicalized, unsterilized, unmutilated body, and every healthcare professional should refuse to knowingly and recklessly take advantage of young girls facing mental health and identity challenges. Double mastectomies, artificially delayed puberty, high doses of testosterone, and hysterectomies are not “care” for women and girls by any stretch of the imagination.
The era of “gender-affirming care” may well be remembered as the lobotomy is remembered today: though popular in its time, it was a grossly abusive pseudoscientific blip rooted in cultural lies about mental illness. “Gender-affirming care” is much the same. Please join CWA in praying for common sense, medical integrity, and biological truth as the Trump Administration continues to protect children from “gender-affirming care.” Our children don’t need drugs and surgeries; they need to hear, “You are perfect exactly the way God made you.”
