Colorado Hospitals Pause Transgender Treatments for Minors Following Presidential Executive Order

Denver Health and UC Health have paused all transgender surgeries for individuals ages 18 and under and UC Health has also stopped providing hormonal therapy for the same age group. This comes as hospitals and clinics across the country are evaluating President Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

The order calls for an end to all federal support for gender-affirming care (GAC) procedures for minors in the United States. Any hospital or clinic that receives federal research grants, funding, Medicaid, and/or Medicare payments is expected to stop providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for gender dysphoric minors. If clinics and hospitals do not halt these prescriptions and procedures, they risk losing federal funding. 

President Trump’s executive order tells all federal agencies to rescind any policies that are based upon the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines that are based upon “junk science.” The executive order also calls for federal enforcement of 18 U.S. Code, Section 116, which criminalizes female genital mutilation. 

In a statement published on January 30, Denver Health stated that “this order will impact gender-diverse youth, including increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidality. Denver Health is proud to be one of a very small number of providers of comprehensive care services to all of our patients, including to LGBTQ+ and gender-diverse patients. As we navigate the order’s requirements, we will continue to provide primary and behavioral health care to all impacted youth and will work to maintain the level of trust we have built with the LGBTQ+ community.”

Denver Health receives $89 million per year from the federal government. Denver Health said it would halt transgender surgeries, but did not mention prescriptions to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. 

Children’s Hospital Colorado, Planned Parenthood, and Transgender Center of the Rockies provide transgender care services to minors and receive federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid payments. These agencies have not made a statement regarding the continuation of GAC for minors. 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in December regarding a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on GAC care for minors. The federal government sued Tennessee on equal protection grounds, arguing the ban on GAC care discriminates based on sex. The ruling is expected to come this summer and will set a precedent for other states. 

Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital, ranked the seventh best hospital in the world by Newsweek, stopped using puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for all minors in 2021, except for clinical trials. The hospital cites an “uncertain” risk to benefit ratio and referred to the “Dutch Protocol” and WPATH standards as “experimental.”

The U.K. stopped prescribing puberty blockers to minors in March 2024 and announced an “indefinite” ban in December. The decision was made following an independent review published by Dr. Hilary Cass, the chair of the independent review of gender identity services for children and young people, which was commissioned by the National Health Service, in England. 

The review states that “the use of masculinising/feminising hormones in those under the age of 18 presents many unknowns, despite their longstanding use in the adult transgender population. The lack of long-term follow-up data on those commencing treatment at an earlier age means we have inadequate information about the range of outcomes for this group.” Cass’s review recommends that the option to provide masculinising/feminising hormones from age 16 should be available, but there should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until a child turns 18. 

The review was criticized by researchers from Yale Law School, Yale School of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Northwestern University, who claimed that it “obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and is rife with misapplications of the scientific method,” and that it speculates about data on transgender patients.