Are Hospitals Really Shuttering Notorious Transgender Youth Clinics?

Citing pronounced pressure from the Trump Administration, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced on June 12th  that it is shutting down its notorious transgender youth clinic that foisted sex-change procedures on minors.

And late last month, Stanford Medicine made a similar-sounding announcement but with a big difference. Stanford Medicine said it would no longer provide sex-change surgeries to minors but it would continue to provide them other forms of so-called gender affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormones.

But this policy change does not seem likely to appease the Trump Administration, which wants all sex-change procedures for minors halted, not just surgeries. Although you often do not read about it in the mainstream press, puberty blockers and hormone treatments for youths can be toxic in a multitude of ways.

Stanford Medicine, which is the umbrella organization for Stanford University Medical School and the Stanford hospital system, said in a statement first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle that,  “After careful review of the latest actions and directives from the federal government and following consultations with clinical leadership, including our multidisciplinary LGBTQ+ program and its providers, Stanford Medicine paused providing gender-related surgical procedures as part of our comprehensive range of medical services for LGBTQ+ patients under the age of 19, effective June 2, 2025.”

And, “We took this step to protect both our providers and patients. This was not a decision we made lightly, especially knowing how deeply this impacts the individuals and families who depend on our essential care and support. Even as circumstances change, we remain committed to providing high-quality, thorough and compassionate medical services for every member of our community.”

This January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order vowing to cut off federal funding to hospitals that provide so-called gender affirming care to minors.  It was titled, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

It said that, “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.”

Therefore, “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 order specifically targeted the same kind of treatments that Stanford Medical is going to continue to provide.  It said that, “The phrase “chemical and surgical mutilation” means the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”

Meanwhile,  on Wednesday, the Trump Justice Department announced they had sent “more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.”

The Department said it was looking into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”

The announcement did not specify which doctors and clinics are getting the subpoenas. But Attorney General Pam Bondi warned that “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.”

Stanley Goldfarb, MD, founder of Do No Harm, which fights wokeness in medicine, told the California Globe that the Stanford announcement is just window dressing because most minors do not get surgery anyway.

“It makes it seem like they are following the order but they are not. It doesn’t mean much of a change.”

He said the sex change treatments “have lots of side effects.”  For example, kids who take puberty blockers end up with stunted brain development. “They have less cognitive ability. And it also alters bone development. The bones don’t develop normally.” And “boys who get estrogen treatment have a 40 fold  [increased chance] of breast cancer.”

But the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle reports on the Stanford announcement made no mention of these well-known side effects.

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Catherine Ho even sanitized the treatments by writing that “Federally accepted guidelines for gender-affirming care for trans youths include puberty blockers to halt the permanent changes that can happen in early adolescence, followed by hormone therapy.”

Actually, the federal government has not been very accepting lately for “gender affirming care for trans youths.”

For example, On May 1, the Department of Health and Human Services released a highly critical 400 page review of the literature on treatments for “pediatric gender dysphoria.”

The Department said that the “review highlights a growing body of evidence pointing to significant risks—including irreversible harms such as infertility—while finding very weak evidence of benefit. That weakness has been a consistent finding of systematic reviews of evidence around the world.”

Ho did not respond to an email asking why her article omitted the side effects of chemical sex change treatments for minors.