November 19, 2025
3 min read
RFK, Jr., Releases Report Attacking Medical Care for Trans Children
A new report from the HHS that is critical of gender-affirming care for minors updates a similar, widely criticized report in May
Supporters of transgender youth demonstrate outside Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in February. The Trump administration recently released a report attacking medical care for trans children.
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., released a study that is critical of gender-affirming care for minors. It updates a widely criticized study that was released in May.
The American Medical Association and numerous other major medical organizations support psychological and medical treatments that help transgender children live as the gender they identify as. Between 2.5 and 8.4 percent of children identify as transgender or gender-diverse. This means they identify with a different gender than, or have a gender expression that does not conform to, the norms of their sex assigned at birth. Gender-affirming treatment can include puberty-blocking hormones and sex hormones such as testosterone and estrogen. The effects of puberty blockers are reversible; sex hormones cause more lasting effects.
The newly-published Department of Health and Human Services report claims that gender-affirming care is harmful—in contrast with widespread medical consensus. An HHS press release asserts that it found that “the harms from sex-rejecting procedures—including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations—are significant, long term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked.” In a statement in that press release, RFK, Jr., said that such care has “inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people.”
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The earlier May report from HHS attracted criticism for a lack of transparency about who its authors were and for its advocacy of unproven psychotherapy for transgender and gender-diverse kids, a population at high risk of suicide. The new report revealed its nine authors, most of whom are known critics of gender-affirming care.
“Now that the authors have announced themselves, they can be identified as engineers of a cottage industry that solely exists to dismantle health care for a vulnerable group of people,” says Meredithe McNamara, an adolescent medicine specialist at the Yale School of Medicine and a co-author of an influential critique of the U.K.’s 2024 Cass Review of gender-affirming care. “Transgender identity is real, transgender people of all ages thrive when they have access to the care they need, and politics needs to get out of medicine.”
“Calling this report ‘political’ is simply wrong,” says HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard. “We will continue to follow the science wherever it leads, even when the findings challenge entrenched interests or preferred narratives.”
An HHS news release included peer reviews of the new report, including one from the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which found that “its underlying methodology lacks sufficient transparency and clarity for its findings to be taken at face value.” The report authors rejected the criticism. (The APA says its stands by its critique.) The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society declined to review the report, according to a statement in the report.
“Gender-affirming care is not fringe; it’s standard, developmentally appropriate health care,” says pediatrician Bianca Allison, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, in response to the HHS report. “It is individualized, careful and—as every major medical organization has stated and a mounting body of evidence indicates—can be lifesaving.”
The new report’s release follows Republican political campaigns over the past several years that have focused on restricting trans kids’ participation in sports and use of locker rooms in schools. President Donald Trump issued a January executive order entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The executive order has contributed to widespread closures of hospital programs treating transgender and gender-diverse kids following threats of federal funding being withdrawn.
Editor’s Note: This story is in development and may be updated.
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