The executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, was signed by President Trump on January 28. It states it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called "transition" of a child from one sex to another.
"It (the administration) will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures," the order states.
After the EO was challenged in court, U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King previously granted a two-week restraining order after the Democratic attorneys general of Washington, Oregon and Minnesota sued the Trump administration. After those two weeks passed, a hearing last week ended with a preliminary injunction.
Dr. Brick Lantz, vice president of advocacy and bioethics at Christian Medical & Dental Associations, tells AFN the federal government has the authority to make federal regulations. One example is HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and a second is the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA.
"I would hope that our current federal government will use those agencies to help regulate this," he says.
Supporters of the body-altering hormones and surgeries refer to them as “gender-affirming care,” but Dr. Lanz says “gender distortion” is a more accurate term for what is happening.
"Unfortunately, some of us in medicine, we're a little slow to catch on to what's true science,” he shares. “But there are physicians out there quoting old studies and philosophy that we need to help this child not commit suicide and proceed along with this treatment.”
The issue of suicide is often used by proponents of “gender-affirming care” to bully their critics and opponents into silence, but that tactic often leads back to the issue of mental illness, like a person with Schizophrenia, since the transgender person feels like he or she was born in the wrong body.
Medical doctors across most of Europe have already stopped ordering and participating in it, Lantz says, and now newer studies suggest the suicide rate jumps for those who go through the treatment.
