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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to end federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors, which the administration defined as under the age of 19. According to the order, "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." File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to end federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors, which the administration defined as under the age of 19. According to the order, “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.” File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 28 (UPI) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to end federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors, which the administration defined as under the age of 19.

“It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” the executive order states.

The order titled, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” bans federal funding to hospitals and clinics that provide puberty blockers, sex hormones and surgical procedures “to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex” or to “alter an individual’s sexual organs to destroy their natural biological functions.”

“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 executive order states. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation’s history, and it must end.”

LGBTQ+ advocates condemned Trump’s latest executive order.

“The order’s characterization of medical care for transgender minors bears no resemblance to reality,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the Lesbian Center for Transgender Rights. “This is an attempt to impose an extreme ideological agenda through hyperbole and fear, not a responsible attempt to address this issue.”

“This broadside condemns transgender youth to extreme and unnecessary pain and suffering, and their parents to agonized futility in caring for their child — all while denying them access to the same medically recommended health care that is readily available to their cisgender peers,” claimed Lambda Legal attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan.

Trump’s executive order follows 26 states, which have enacted their own bans and restrictions.

In August 2023, a Texas law was enacted to ban transgender youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The law faced legal challenges after a state district court judge said it “interferes with Texas families’ private decisions and strips Texas parents … of the right to seek, direct and provide medical care for their children.”

Last year, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a law to ban gender-affirming care for minors. The law made South Carolina the 25th state to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 18.

In December, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors, despite a challenge by the Biden administration.

Tuesday’s executive order to strip federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors is written with a focus on vulnerability and the future.

“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,” the order states.

“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.”

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