The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a report on transgender healthcare, which has been widely criticized for its lack of scientific rigor and reliance on pseudoscience.
The report, commissioned under Trump’s executive order, promotes conversion therapy for transgender youth and redefines social transition as medical treatment. It also suggests that transgender healthcare should be judged based on employment status and romantic relationships rather than patient well-being.
Medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have condemned the report as misleading and inaccurate. It ignores established research showing the benefits of gender-affirming care and instead pushes an ideological agenda. The report also falsely claims that European countries are pulling back on transgender healthcare, despite recent medical guidelines in France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland supporting gender-affirming care.
Here we have collected some relevant articles and resources:
Trump’s HHS urges therapy for transgender youth, departing from broader gender-affirming health care (PBS)
Gender transition care for #trans children and teens lacks evidence of benefits and poses risks, according to a new report released by Trump. Medical experts describes it as poor quality research that threatens access to care. (Washington Post)
Archive
Fact Check: Trump’s HHS Review On Trans Care Filled With Pseudoscience, Pushes Conversion Therapy (Erin in the Morning)
RFK Jr.’s HHS releases controversial report on gender-affirming care. Here’s what it says. (USA Today)
Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement that “this report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.”
RFK Jr.’s HHS report pushes therapy, not medical interventions, for trans youth (Washington Blade)
Inside the HHS Review on Trans Youth: Facts, Fears, Fallout (Transvitae)
New HHS Report Urges ‘Exploratory Therapy’ for Transgender Youth (Time)
“Though the report argues that this “exploratory therapy” is not the same as the long practice of “conversion therapy”—which is a practice of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity—advocates see little difference.”
Time
What does the HHS gender-affirming care report mean for trans rights? (Transitics)
“Gender dysphoria is a term that mental health professionals use to describe clinically significant distress someone feels because their sense of their gender does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. It is an official diagnosis in the DSM, a book published by the American Psychiatric Association that classifies mental disorders, but not everyone who identifies as transgender or gender-diverse has this diagnosis.
Gender-affirming care is a wide range of treatments offered by a multidisciplinary team that is tailored to the individual.
For years, major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have affirmed the practice of gender-affirming care and agree that it’s clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults.”
Trump administration HHS gender dysphoria report (Wikipedia)
Image: Getty
