President Trump has signed an executive order restricting “chemical and surgical” sex-change procedures for minors, saying they are a “stain on our Nation’s history” that must end. The order, entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” claims that 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 also states that these procedures have lifelong medical complications and can cause a child to become sterile. Trump’s order claims that the U.S. will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support these procedures, and will enforce all laws that prohibit or limit them.
President-elect Trump said that the order “directs agencies to use every available means to cut off Federal financial participation in institutions which seek to provide these barbaric medical procedures, that should have never been allowed to take place.”
The move was praised by Mark Trammell, executive director and general counsel of the Center for American Liberty, who called Trump’s action “incredible leadership” that “rightly distances federal agencies from the discredited World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”
However, activists for trans rights criticized the move, with Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, saying it is a “brazen attempt” to put politicians between people and their doctors and prevent them from accessing evidence-based healthcare.
