On July 22, America’s largest transgender youth “clinic” shut its doors in response to an executive order banning the practice of chemical and surgical mutilation of children.
The Center for Transyouth Health and Development (CTH) at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has administered experimental transgender “treatments” for more than 30 years, providing puberty-blocking hormones and genitalia surgeries to thousands of children and young adults. Despite a complete lack of data to support the practice and mounting evidence of its harm, CTH clinicians had no intention of shutting down before Trump’s order forced the hospital’s hand.
Entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” the White House order states that U.S. policy will no longer “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another,” and will “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
After a “thorough legal and financial assessment,” the hospital decided to cut its losses.
“Center team members were heartbroken to learn of the decision,” the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles website said.
One protester of the center’s closure referred to her inability to love herself in her biological body, further highlighting the psychological struggles underpinning gender dysphoria.
Follow the Data
Dr. Al Oliva, a plastic surgeon and Catholic Medical Association board member, likened the center’s closure to the shutdown of the world’s largest youth transitioning clinic in Tavistock, London in 2022 following a detransitioner’s lawsuit against the country’s National Health Service. This event led to the publication of the Cass Review in 2024.
The Cass Review data failed to show any psychological benefit from transitioning children and adolescents, but it did reveal the irreparable harm, Oliva said. This includes increased psychological illness such as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, obesity, sexual dysfunction and other metabolic disorders.
In response to the emerging data, European nations have begun to implement bans, but major American medical boards have determined to stay the course.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alongside attorneys general from 22 states, sued the Trump administration soon after the executive order published in January, with Bonta affirming health care practitioners’ “legal obligation,” under state law to continue to provide the treatment to minors, but a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Tennessee’s state law prohibiting sex transitioning procedures and treatments indicates that the current executive and judicial branches will merge efforts to eradicate the left’s exploitation of gender dysphoric minors.
A growing number of lawsuits against gender transition physicians and clinics pose an added threat to the high-dollar industry.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles already faces at least one high-profile legal case. In 2024, a student from UCLA sued several of the center’s doctors for malpractice after puberty-blocking hormones were administered to her as a 12-year-old, followed by an irreparable surgery to remove her breasts at age 14. Kaya Breen was treated by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, center director, who made headlines when she refused to share data from a 2018 million-dollar government-funded study on transgender health care. The government is now overseeing Olson-Kennedy’s “mischaracterization” of data.
“Ultimately, it’s going to take financial disincentives in the form of multi-million dollar lawsuits to end this ruining peoples’ lives,” Oliva said.
An Ugly Chapter in American Health Care
Physicians who have led the charge against gender transition treatment for decades are thrilled to see the effects of their efforts, accomplished at the risk of their reputations and alienation within the broader medical community.
For nearly twenty years, Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist with the American College of Pediatrics, has opposed the practice, assisting in legislation and advocating for the health of children.
“We are in a good place,” Van Meter said. “ We are feeling very vindicated for all of the things we believed in good faith and good science.”
Van Meter first entered the fight against gender transitioning after attending a joint meeting of the Pediatric Endocrine Society and European Society of Endocrinology in New York City around 2007.
Standing outside the door of a packed workshop session, Van Meter said he heard “the most incredibly awful … ideology and approach,” to treating transgender children. Just a few years later when the Pediatric Endocrine Society published gender transition guidelines, they were “based on absolute garbage … not biological evidence,” he said.
While the American Academy of Pediatrics was “going off the rails,” the American College of Pediatrics was at the forefront of the opposition and was labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its efforts.
A Fight to the End
In an American Principles Project report published earlier this month, researchers referred to Trump and his administration as leaders on the “frontlines” of the fight against medicalized gender transition.
“With the current administration in Washington, we have a lot of backing to go in and essentially pull the curtain on all of these clinics around the country,” Van Meter said. “We are going to look at what they’ve been doing, review charts, and determine whether they had informed consent.”
In Texas, physicians illegally continued transitioning youth even after a state Supreme Court ruling made the practice illegal in 2024. Gender activists will find this less achievable under the Trump order.
Disregarding the Hippocratic Oath in medical institutions illustrates a new age in medicine, where physicians are seen as vending machines, only there to dispense drugs and treatments anytime the patient makes a request.
“Medicine has gone from being a vocation to being a business based on economic transactions,” Oliva said. “Our obligation should always be the welfare of the patient and never to do harm.”