At every turn, young people are told that if they want to change their God-given gender, they can do so with a snap of their fingers and with sweeping permission from our nation’s highest leaders. But it does not take policy expertise or a medical degree to know that sterilization and puberty-blocking drugs are not authentic medical care.
Fortunately, President Donald Trump issued an executive order putting a stop to child mutilation and the confusion that has taken hold of countless hospitals, including private Catholic hospitals once committed to respecting the dignity of every person. His effort should be applauded as an important first step toward protecting young people.
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Trump’s executive order is unapologetic. Going forward, it reads, the U.S. government “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.”
It outlines what children and young teenagers frequently experience after attempting to surgically change their physical characteristics. They eventually realize, for example, that “they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding” or soon discover that they are “trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”
It is a great tragedy of our time that so many young people are being told that these harmful procedures will make their lives better.
Trump’s executive order begins to undo countless actions taken by the Biden administration to force-feed reasonable Americans the notion that sex-change surgery is the compassionate way to “treat” people questioning their gender, when the very opposite is true.
Trump explicitly calls on HHS to end the Biden administration’s harmful redefinition and application of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. Intent on imposing a destructive gender ideology on the American people, the Biden administration in 2024 amended rules pertaining to Section 1557 to force people of faith to fund abortion and transgender surgeries through their health insurance plans. Section 1557 reinterpreted the definition of “on the basis of sex” to include “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy.”
Revising the act delivered a forceful blow to American Christians, who make up nearly 70% of the U.S. population, not to mention countless others who disagree with this redefinition.
But Biden’s HHS went a step further. In a blatant attack on religious liberty, the administration required religious doctors and other medical professionals to perform gender-transition procedures no matter their own personal beliefs about doing so, while denying them the opportunity to opt out even for religious reasons.
The policy from the Biden HHS department forced Catholic hospitals into a difficult choice: either comply with the order or shut down and cut off entire communities from healthcare.
As a direct result of the Biden administration’s policies, far too many children have been put through the physical and mental agony caused by gender ideology in places where it should never exist.
Nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the country have given vulnerable children hormone therapy or performed gender-transition surgeries between 2019 and 2023. Out of more than 520 minors who received treatments in these Catholic hospitals, “more than 150 had surgeries to alter their appearances to resemble the opposite sex, while more than 380 children were given puberty blockers or hormone therapies,” according to a recent study from Do No Harm, an organization devoted to keeping politics out of medicine.
Catholic hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare providers have no business engaging in any of these activities, which run counter not only to good medicine but the teachings of their faith, too. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has affirmed that transgender interventions are opposed to Catholic moral teaching and voted to move forward with updating its guidance for Catholic healthcare institutions, insisting that these institutions must not perform any such interventions.
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Thanks to the president’s executive order, it is my hope that soon families will once again have access to life-affirming care, free from harmful political agendas that damage or destroy patients’ health and well-being. For now, Trump’s executive order will help Catholic medical institutions — and many others — adhere to the highest standards of authentic medicine as well as Catholic social and moral teachings.
Faithful Americans must continue to reject the dangerous, life-altering, and irreversible experiments on children that are happening across our nation in the very institutions that should be protecting them. Let us join hands in setting a high standard of care for every patient that affirms their inherent dignity and worth.
Chris Faddis is president of Solidarity HealthShare, a health care sharing ministry guided by the moral teachings of the Catholic Church that negotiates directly with providers to ensure delivery of high-quality and affordable, life-affirming health care for the more than 46,000 members it has served since 2016.