A major agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a memo to hospitals and medical providers in the U.S. this week reminding them of ‘the dangerous chemical and surgical mutilation of children, including interventions that cause sterilization,’ and vowed the agency would continue aligning its policies with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides health coverage to more than 100 million people through Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, sent a memo Wednesday that was obtained by Fox News Digital reiterating ‘the program requirements of hospitals to serve all patients, especially children, with dignity and adherence to the highest standard of care that is informed by robust evidence and the utmost scientific integrity.’ The memo is effective immediately.
‘Other developed nations have taken decisive actions to prohibit or significantly limit these mutilation practices to ensure that children are protected from harmful, unscientific medical interventions,’ the memo adds.
The notice also said ‘ CMS may begin taking steps in the future to align policy, including CMS-regulated provider requirements and agreements, with the highest-quality medical evidence in the treatment of the nation’s children in order to protect children from harmful, often irreversible mutilation, including sterilization practices.
‘In recent years, medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children have proliferated,’ the memo adds. ‘Initiated with an underdeveloped body of evidence and now known to cause long-term and irreparable harm to some children, CMS may begin taking steps in the future to adjust its policies to reflect this reality and the lack of medical evidence in support of these harmful treatments.’
Dr. Kurt Miceli, the medical director at the conservative medical activist group Do No Harm, told Fox News Digital the memo ‘did a nice job’ of highlighting medical data from other countries regarding ‘gender-affirming’ care for kids.
‘And we really salute them for really looking at the data and being very clear that we need to protect children, really, from these irreversible harms that, unfortunately, we see from sex-change surgeries or hormonal therapies that are used,’ Miceli said.
The notice comes as the Trump administration has been moving to weed out ‘radical gender ideology’ across U.S. institutions and outlawed gender-transition treatments and surgeries for minors.
Many hospitals across the country are still conducting these procedures and ignoring Trump’s orders.
Lawsuits are already underway challenging Trump’s other gender-related executive orders, too, which include booting transgender troops out of the military and banning biological men from women’s sports. HHS is also undergoing sweeping staffing changes due to Elon Musk’s DOGE layoffs.
The CMS memo said its alert ‘is informed by a growing body of evidence and protective policies across the world’ and cited studies outlining the effects of gender-transition treatments for kids in England and Finland, as well as several from U.S. medical journals and the Mayo Clinic.
Between 2016 and 2020, nearly 3,700 children between the ages of 12 and 18 underwent surgery, with more than 3,200 having breast or chest surgery and more than 400 undergoing genital surgery, resulting in permanent changes to their reproductive organs, the memo states. More than 120,000 children between 6 and 17, from 2016 to 2020, were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, with more than 17,000 starting treatments like puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
‘In several notable instances, research used to promote these harmful procedures on children contained obvious and significant methodological flaws or demonstrated outright scientific misconduct,’ the memo stated.