President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris could lead to major shifts in the federal government’s promotion of transgender ideology and support for gender transitions for children, according to academics who closely follow the issue.
“The left-wing gender insanity that is being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse,” Trump said earlier this year in a campaign video. “…On Day 1, I will reverse (President) Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care.”
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In 24 states, doctors can still legally facilitate gender transitions for minors through transgender medications and surgeries. 26 states have banned or placed limits on gender transitions for minors.
Although most legislative debates over so-called gender transitions for children occur at the state level, the Biden administration used regulatory agencies and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to try to expand access. Before his presidency, the issue was not on the minds of most Americans or most politicians.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for example, issued a regulation which interpreted “sex discrimination” prohibitions within the Affordable Care Act to include discrimination based on a person’s self-affirmed gender identity.
Under the rule, any health care provider or insurer that does not cover surgeries or medications for gender transitions would lose federal funds. This rule applies regardless of whether the patient is an adult or a minor, but is currently unenforceable because it has been blocked by a judge.
Biden’s Justice Department also sued Tennessee because the state does not allow doctors to facilitate surgical or medication-induced gender transitions in children. The Justice Department based its arguments on laws that prohibit sexual discrimination and the case will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The administration also reviewed Title IX protections to redefine sex discrimination to include any discrimination based on gender identity. This could have forced publicly funded schools and universities to allow biological males in women’s locker rooms, dormitories and sports competitions, but was blocked by multiple court rulings.
“Those regulations are the strongest,” Marie Hillard, a registered nurse and senior fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA.
According to Hillard, Trump’s first step in addressing this issue should be to scrap Biden-era policies that promote gender ideology and then harness the power of regulatory agencies to protect children from irreversible transgender medications and surgeries.
“I think it’s going to be through the regulatory agencies because the current administration has used these regulations to basically distort what sex means,” Hillard added.
Step one: Reverse Biden’s policies
A repeal of Biden’s regulations would be an important first step, according to Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
“It then takes an effort by every agency to eliminate ‘gender identity’ language, reverse policies that include self-defined ‘identities’ within the protected category of ‘sex’ and that promote or fund medicalized ‘gender transitions’ , particularly in minors,” Hasson told CNA.
Hasson encouraged a complete review of the agenda of the past four years.
According to Hasson, this includes ending programs “that tell children to ‘self-identify’ based on their sexual orientation and ‘gender identity’” and the government’s collection of that data. It includes removing all agency posts that promote transgender surgeries and medications for minors and ending the Justice Department’s efforts to prevent states from restricting transgender medications and surgeries for children.
“Ending these disabling, disfiguring and sterilizing interventions on minors will require derailing the ‘transgender train’ at the station, as well as closing all stops on the line,” Hasson said.
Hillard agreed, saying the Biden administration used the anti-discrimination argument to force people to violate their conscience and “cooperate in what we know are mutilating activities.”
Trump expressed support for such actions earlier this year, saying: “I will sign a new executive order directing all federal agencies to cease all programs that promote the concept of sexual and gender transition at any age.”
Next Step: Use of Executive Authority
After reversing the Biden administration’s actions, the next step would be to use regulatory agencies to prevent gender transitions of children across the country.
“The Trump administration should stop feeding this monster federal funds,” Hasson told CNA.
Hasson said the administration should end grants for “unethical ‘gender’ experiments” on minors and impose federal funding restrictions “on hospitals that conduct ‘transgender’ experiments on minors.”
Hillard noted that withholding Medicaid funding for hospitals that perform gender transitions on minors could be an effective approach, and said “that’s where they can use their money” to hold these hospitals accountable.
Hasson added that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could “ban the off-label use of sterility-inducing, puberty-blocking, and ‘transgender’ hormones in otherwise healthy minors.” .
Similarly, Hillard suggested using the FDA to restrict gender transition medications, noting that “regulations are being misused right now to promote the entire gender identity agenda.” He said the medications have “good moral uses” to help children born with disorders of sexual development, but must be regulated to avoid “mutilating use” of minors undergoing gender transition.
Jane Anderson, vice president of the American College of Pediatricians, told CNA that the Trump administration should hold federal agencies responsible for “following the science that European countries are supporting.”
“We and other organizations launched the Physicians Protecting Children Statement to call on prominent medical organizations in the United States to stop promoting these (transgender surgeries and medications) that harm our children,” Anderson said.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA that Trump should “establish a president’s bioethics council to address critical ethical issues arising in medicine and the biosciences.”
“This advisory board would assist the administration in policy decisions and in raising the profile of important day-to-day issues before the public,” he said. “The president could task the bioethics council to begin its work with a mandate to address the issue of appropriate and inappropriate treatments for young people facing gender dysphoria.”
Earlier this year, Trump said he supported a Justice Department investigation into “Big Pharma and large hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up the horrific, long-term side effects of sexual transitions to enrich themselves at the expense of patients.” “vulnerable.”
The president-elect has said he would support congressional action to ban transgender surgeries for children and prohibit any taxpayer money from being used to support transgender procedures. He also urged lawmakers to support people who want to file lawsuits against doctors who performed gender transition procedures on them when they were children.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Tyler Arnold
Tyler Arnold is a reporter for the National Catholic Register. He previously worked at The Center Square and has published in a variety of outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative, and The Federalist.