Image CreditBreccan F. Thies / The Federalist
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Thursday morning that it will be pursuing several measures to hold states, hospitals, and companies accountable for pushing harmful “gender transition” on children.
On a call with members of the media, an HHS official from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the agency would be taking two major actions: Defunding hospitals that provide “gender transition” interventions to children under the age of 18 while stopping all federal Medicaid dollars from going to states for the same procedures, including for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), for those under the age of 19.
“Collectively, these actions will ensure that the federal government in no way funds directly gender transition procedures on minors, and also does not fund facilities that perform these procedures on minors,” the official stated.
The move comes after HHS published a report confirming what most sane people already knew: There is no evidence for chemically castrating children or mutilating their genitals on the basis of a mental illness. Shortly thereafter, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., told doctors to stop the harmful procedures.
Using statutory authority under 42 CFR 1001.2, which allows the HHS secretary to declare a treatment modality not to be safe and effective, Kennedy will sign a document stating that practitioners who employ “gender transition” interventions as a treatment modality “will be deemed not to meet professionally recognized standards of health care,” another HHS official stated.
The declaration will summarize the HHS report findings, noting the rising rate of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and the “expansion of sex-rejecting procedures in the United States.” The declaration will state that “sex rejecting procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care.”
Assistant Secretary for Health, Admiral Brian Christine, will sign a public health education message, also based on the HHS report, stating medical professionals should refused to provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgical interventions to children and adolescents because “these treatments pose unnecessary and disproportionate risks of harm with insufficient evidence of benefit,” an HHS official stated.
Christine will instead be calling on doctors to use comprehensive psychosocial assessment and support as the foundation of care for children confused about their gender.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be going after 12 medical manufacturers over breast binders — often used by gender-confused girls to flatted their breasts in an attempt to appear more masculine (thereby feeding their delusions).
Manufacturers market these binders to children for “transgender” purposes, but because breast binders are a Class 1 medical device, as they are often used in recovery from a cancer-related mastectomy, the FDA will notify companies that they are not in compliance with medical device regulations.
“The warning letters being issued will formally notify the companies in question of their significant regulatory violations and how they should take prompt corrective action,” an HHS official stated.
HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is reversing a Biden administration move that included gender dysphoria in the definition of “disability,” as it pertains to civil rights law. OCR will clarify that “gender dysphoria not resulting from physical impairments” will not be included in those definitions for implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of disability and applies to recipients of HHS funding.
The proposed rule change will “reassure recipients of HHS funding that policies preventing or limiting sex-rejecting procedures do not violate Section 504’s disability nondiscrimination requirements,” a press release states.
The announcement comes one day after HHS also decided to strip millions in grant funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is one of the most prolific organizations pushing gender transition procedures on children.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
