Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation

Trump issued a fabulous new executive order on Jan. 28 entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” What, you might ask, is meant by “chemical and surgical mutilation” of “children”? According to the EO, it involves “the use of puberty blockers, … the use of [cross-gender] sex hormones, … and [cross-gender] surgical procedures” on “individuals under 19 years of age.”

Justification and Purpose of This Executive Order

In effect, so-called “gender-affirming care” is a form of child abuse that results in “maiming and sterilizing … impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”

“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.”

Accordingly, “this dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”

The General New Policy

The new policy of the United States government is that (1) it will no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another”; and (2) “it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”

In short, so far as the executive branch of government is concerned, the federal government will cease funding or promoting in any way a child transitioning to the other sex and will enforce only those laws that prohibit or limit it.

Practical Impact on Hospitals, Whistleblowers, Insurers, and Federal Guidance

The most important element of this EO is that “institutions receiving Federal research or education grants,” “including medical schools and hospitals,” must “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

Theoretically, they could continue to engage in such medical malpractice. But, if they did so, they would lose all federal grants. Few hospitals and medical schools would risk that, though I suppose some states may try to subvert this EO by increasing aid to hospitals that continue dispensing puberty blockers, cross-gender hormones, and surgery; or by accessing medication through international agencies.

As a further guard against hospitals that attempt to cheat, new protection will be given to hospital whistleblowers who reveal violations of this EO to “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.” “The Secretary of HHS shall promptly withdraw HHS’s March 2, 2022, guidance document titled ‘HHS Notice and Guidance on Gender Affirming Care, Civil Rights and Patient Privacy,’” which urges parents and healthcare providers to report to the Office of Civil Rights (“a law enforcement agency”) any refusal of so-called “gender-affirming care” and which threatens those who divulge such “care.” In its place, the secretary of HHS will “issue new guidance protecting whistleblowers.”

The whistleblower protection comes on the heels of the Biden Justice Department’s prosecution of a young Texas surgeon, Eithan Haim, for blowing the whistle regarding transgender surgical procedures on minors as young as 11 (i.e., child abuse) at Texas Children’s Hospital. Thankfully, Trump put a stop to it.

Healthcare insurance offered by the federal government to its employees and to members of the military, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, must “exclude coverage for pediatric transgender surgeries or hormone treatments.” Federal publications promoting such practices will be replaced by publications showing the harm.

The federal government’s policy will no longer be guided by the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), “which lacks scientific integrity.” Instead, “the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.”

Legal Action by the Trump Administration Against Violators

Moreover, the attorney general and Department of Justice will take legal action against “any entity that may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation,” thereby ending the “deception of consumers.”

It directs the attorney general to draft legislation making it easy for parents and their children to sue in cases where the “healthy body parts have been damaged by medical professionals practicing chemical and surgical mutilation, which should include a lengthy statute of limitations.” The “lengthy statute of limitations” will enable detransitioners (those who later regret their chemical and surgical mutilation) to get justice long after the malpractice has occurred.

Finally, the attorney general will take legal action against “so-called sanctuary States that facilitate stripping custody from parents” who oppose chemical and surgical mutilation of their child. That means that the Department of Justice is coming after states which enable minors from other states to get sterilizing or body-mutilating transgender treatment, against parental wishes and when outlawed by their own home state.

Growing Realization of the Problem With So-called “Gender-Affirming Care”

In the overwhelming majority of cases (up to 85 percent), children with gender dysphoria who are not given puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones will grow out of their gender dysphoria. There is a growing body of evidence that transitioning children to the other sex serves no good purpose. The percentage of 18-29-year-olds in the U.S. who identify as transgender (2 percent) is seven times greater than the percentage of 30-49-year-olds who so identify (0.3 percent). In some children (especially girls), it may be a case of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” where clusters of teens “come out” as “transgender” as a sort of social contagion.

The Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) has put together a helpful “Gender Dysphoria Fact Sheet,” which documents research that highlights the problems with so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. Two-thirds to three-quarters of children with gender dysphoria have comorbidities (i.e., other mental health issues) that may have contributed to the development of the gender dysphoria. There is a “51 percent greater mortality than the general population in male to female [transgender youth] taking cross-sex hormones.”

CMDA’s Dr. Andre Van Mol has put together an excellent summary analysis of Britain’s Cass Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People, commissioned by Britain’s National Health Services (NHS) and published in April 2024. The review concluded that methodologically studies supporting “gender-affirming” healthcare are of methodologically poor quality and that there is no evidence that transgender transition reduces suicide. As a result of the report, Britain has banned the prescription of puberty blockers for minors, joining Sweden, Norway, and other European nations that are moving in the direction of restricting transitioning by minors.

The Third in a Trilogy of Executive Orders Undercutting Gender Ideology

This EO is the third to address transgenderism directly. On Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, Trump signed, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which takes the executive branch of the federal government out of the business of “funding” and “promoting” “gender [identity] ideology.” It declares that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, “male” and “female,” bases the definition of “sex” on reproductive biology, and takes action to prohibit male access to female-only spaces.

These practical measures include: rescinding Biden’s executive order that falsely interpreted Title IX to mandate that, in public schools and universities, female-identifying males are allowed in female restrooms and living facilities; keeping opposite-sex persons out of “single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964” and protecting the right of those therein “to express the binary nature of sex” (presumably including the right of public school and university teachers to dissent from “gender ideology”); and keeping males out of female prisons and rape shelters and prohibiting the use of federal funds for transgender transitioning of inmates.

It also mandates that all “government-issued identification documents, including passports,” and all government “personnel records” “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”

The second EO dealing directly with transgenderism, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” was issued on Jan. 27. It effectively bans transgender persons from serving in the military and in the Coast Guard, which in turn ends “invented and identification-based pronoun usage” and the placement of persons who identify as the opposite sex in “sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for” the other sex.

The justification for such action is due to the special needs of the military. Attempts to accommodate persons with the “mental health constraints” of “gender dysphoria” through “hormonal and surgical medical interventions” and psychotherapy, rules that permit soldiers of one sex use of facilities designated for the other sex, and speech policies that require all others to adopt “pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” are “inconsistent with” the military’s “high mental and physical health standards” and with the need for “troop readiness, … cohesion, honesty, [and] humility.”

As regards “honesty” and “humility,” the EO stresses that “a man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

How many transgender soldiers are there and what has been the cost of transgender medical services to such personnel? Studies in 2016 and 2018 indicate as many as 10,000-15,000 service members on active duty or reserve identify as transgender. The Pentagon has spent more than $15 million on transgender medical, mostly since the start of the Biden administration. Four-fifths of these expenditures have gone to psychotherapy and one-fifth to gender reassignment surgeries.

A related executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” puts an end to DEI in the Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and all military academies. This includes the removal of administrative bodies and curricula devoted to “radical DEI and gender ideologies.”

READ MORE from Robert A. J. Gagnon:

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Robert A. J. Gagnon is a visiting scholar at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Ridgeland, Miss., and has taught previously at Middlebury College, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and Houston Christian University. He has degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.), Harvard Divinity School (M.T.S.), and Princeton Theological Seminary (Ph.D.). He has published a number of works, including The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon).

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