WASHINGTON—The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is reminding hospital providers that they have an obligation to protect children from irreversible transgender procedures, the agency said in a press release on Wednesday.
Following on the heels of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at protecting children from such procedures, CMS is alerting hospital providers of “serious quality and safety concerns associated with harmful, medical interventions for gender dysphoria.”
CMS, which is a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, also said that it might start taking steps to “align its policies and regulations with medical evidence and to safeguard children from often irreversible experiments.”
“CMS will continue to follow any applicable substantive and procedural requirements in taking any future action,” the release added.
Other HHS agencies are issuing similar warnings to their grantees, CMS said.
The release points to the high number of children who are being started on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, and CMS points to research showing possible long-term effects of puberty blockers on children’s development, including bone density, bone growth, fertility, and more.
The agency said it is reminding hospitals that the United States is actually an outlier when it comes to the treatment of children experiencing gender dysphoria. The United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland have all recently restricted these dangerous interventions for children amid growing concerns about their potentially irreversible effects.
“CMS reminds hospitals that it is of utmost importance that all providers follow the highest standards of care and adhere closely to the foundational principles of medicine in doing no harm, especially as it comes to America’s children,” the release states. “CMS may take additional appropriate actions to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation and to appropriately update its policies.”
The president’s executive order on gender ideology, signed in late January, describes the transgender procedures that doctors and activists have pushed upon children in recent years, promising that the United States will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the attempted gender transition of a child, and vowing to “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
“Across the country today, 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,” the order states. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”
It continues: “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. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
Trump’s executive order also describes the “blatant harm” done to children by the flawed guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization that “lacks scientific integrity,” and tells parents that their children will kill themselves if they do not obtain so-called “gender-affirming care.”
The order specifically refers to WPATH guidance as “junk science,” and calls on the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish a review, within 90 days of the order, of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of kids with gender dysphoria or other identity-based confusion.
The order also directs the heads of Trump’s agencies to ” immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” putting the responsibility on HHS to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
