Trump signs order restricting transgender ‘chemical and surgical mutilation’ of children

Demonstrators rally on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on Dec. 4, 2024, as justices heard oral arguments in a challenge to a Tennessee law banning transgender surgeries for minors. / Credit: Migi Fabara/CNA

CNA Staff, Jan 29, 2025 / 13:15 pm (CNA).

President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening issued an executive order that restricts transgender surgeries and drugs for youth, with the president vowing that the United States “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” the controversial procedures.

The order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” notes that throughout the U.S. “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children” under the “radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”

“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation’s history, and it must end,” the order states, arguing that children who undergo such procedures “soon regret” having mutilated their reproductive organs and other body parts. 

The order directs that every federal agency that offers “research or educational grants” to medical institutions must ensure that those institutions are not administrating transgender drugs to, or performing transgender procedures on, youth.

It further orders the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “take all appropriate action” to “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” including via Medicare and Medicaid law and drug use reviews. 

As well, the directive moves to end the use of what it calls “junk science” promoted by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). That organization has come under fire for endorsing what critics have called the “pseudoscience” of transgenderism, with an internal leak last year revealing its members admitting that children are too young to fully understand the consequences of such procedures. 

Federal agencies “shall rescind or amend all policies” relying on WPATH’s guidance, Trump’s Tuesday order said. HHS, meanwhile, will perform and publish a review of “best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria.”

The directive comes directly after Trump on Monday signed an executive order to end “radical gender ideology” in the military, reversing former President Joe Biden’s directive that allowed soldiers who identify as transgender to serve in the armed forces.

In December then-President-elect Trump vowed to sign executive orders to end transgender surgeries for children, to prevent biological men from playing in women’s sports, and to end the promotion of gender ideology in schools and the military. 

The president last week signed an executive order billed as “defending women from gender ideology extremism,” one that the White House said restored “biological truth to the federal government.” 

Among other sweeping measures, that order established a government-wide acknowledgement of the reality of biological sex, including the explicit assertion that there are only two sexes, male and female.