Over the past decade, clinics that offer procedures under the label “gender-affirming care” seemed to have popped up across the country like Starbucks, offering puberty blockers to minors and anatomy-mutilating procedures like they’re handing out lattes and cake pops. Fueled by progressive ideology, activist medicine, and social media trends, clinics offering hormone therapy and permanently damaging surgeries to minors exploded in number, especially after 2015.
A decade or so ago, nearly 100 clinics across the U.S. were offering some form of gender-affirming care to youth. These clinics, often affiliated with major children’s hospitals and universities, touted themselves as a necessary resource for kids struggling with their mental health, often going so far as to suggest that these kids might not survive without them.
But finally, now, in 2025, the number of such clinics is dropping — and fast.
In just the past few weeks, a string of closures has made headlines. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced the shutdown of its Center for Transyouth Health and Development, which had been one of the largest in the country. The hospital cited “challenges to the ‘shifting policy landscape ’” as one of the key reasons. Among other concerns, the hospital risks losing federal funding should it choose to ignore the current administration’s crackdown on targeting children with this ideology and its life-altering practices.
Children’s National Hospital in DC, another high-profile institution, announced it would stop offering puberty blockers and hormone therapy to minors. The hospital announced the decision on its website with a message that said, in part, “In light of escalating legal and regulatory risks to Children’s National, our providers, and the families we serve, we will be discontinuing the prescription of gender-affirming medications.”
Yale New Haven Health in Connecticut also pulled the plug on its pediatric gender clinic. As CT Mirror reported, Yale’s health system quietly stopped offering the services earlier this year. And Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare providers in the country, has also recently backed away from providing gender-related services to minors altogether.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a trend — and it’s a long-overdue correction on one of the most significant stains on our country’s history.
According to The New York Times, the Trump campaign has put this issue front and center in its policy priorities, and most of the public is ready for it. The paper outlined the Trump administration’s aggressive approach in rolling back transgender medical procedures for minors, hammering down on the potential that these hospitals face of losing crucial funds if they continue to offer these services to underage patients. While the Times wrung its hands over what it characterizes as a rollback of rights, others see it as a return to sanity.
So why is this happening now? A few reasons:
Legal liability is catching up.
The Manhattan Institute notes several cases that demonstrate the dramatic changes in the legal landscape over the last two years, which are empowering parents to hold politically driven teachers and doctors accountable for their part in transitioning kids, especially when they know several vulnerabilities are at play. Medical professionals who once eagerly administered hormones to teens are now facing malpractice lawsuits from young adults who regret transitioning, often permanently altered and sterilized before they could legally vote. Detransitioners are beginning to share their stories, and not only are they no longer being ignored, but they are also being amplified.
A local news feature in California highlighted a detransitioner who said she was pushed into medical transition as a teen without any real psychological evaluations. Unfortunately, stories like these are more common than most realize, and the victims are finally being encouraged to open up and share their devastating experiences.
The science was always dubious. Now people are admitting it.
Despite the repeated claims that gender-affirming care is “lifesaving,” the actual evidence behind it is astonishingly weak. European countries — hardly bastions of social conservatism — have been backpedaling on these treatments for years. Sweden, the UK, and Finland have restricted these interventions for minors, citing insufficient long-term research and serious side effects. Thankfully, America is finally reversing course as well.
Public opinion is also shifting because people are no longer afraid to speak up, as the woke mob has lost almost all of its ability to bully critics into silence. What used to be taboo to even question — whether it’s ethical to put a 13-year-old on puberty blockers — is now mainstream conversation. More Americans are realizing this isn’t about acceptance or kindness. It’s about the irreversible medicalization of kids who often have coexisting mental health issues, trauma, or just a desperate need to fit in.
Parents have also had enough. Legislators — especially in red states — have responded with laws banning this “care” for minors, and even a small handful of Democrats are distancing themselves from the issue, recognizing the political poison that it has become.
Of course, it doesn’t help the credibility of these clinics when they seem to treat “informed consent” like a formality. It seems like it’s harder to get a tattoo in some states than to start testosterone or remove parts of your anatomy. At their peak, a large portion of the population fell for the narrative that gender clinics were compassionate, cutting-edge, and life-saving. But now, as lawsuits stack up and the tide of public sentiment shifts, even the institutions that helped build this movement are quietly backing down. Clinics that were once bragging about gender surgeries for teens are suddenly scrubbing websites, issuing vague press releases, and hoping the public doesn’t ask too many follow-up questions or demand accountability.
A few hardline activists frame every closure as an assault on “trans rights.” Still, the reality is that the medical community is starting to reckon with what many see as one of the biggest ethical and moral failures of our time.
When the history of this moment is written, we will look back at these closures as the beginning of the course correction for a path people never should have taken.
As for those gender clinics closing up shop? Maybe now they can pivot to something less controversial and truly beneficial to the health of their patients, like gluten-free juice cleanses. Or colonics. Or anything, really, that doesn’t involve prescribing cross-sex hormones or the cutting off of body parts to a 14-year-old who just downloaded TikTok. It’s long past time for the medical community to get back to helping and healing rather than harming.
