We do not allow those under 18 to vote. We do not allow those under 18 to drink alcohol. We do not allow those under 18 to enlist in the military. In most states, those under 18 cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse. But, to our friends on the left, those under 18 ought to be able to consent to physical castration, plastic surgery, and life altering, physically irreversible surgical procedures. President Trump is trying to put a stop to that.

Penn ceases gender-affirming surgery for patients under age 19

The move comes after an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to cease grants and other funding that could be used for gender-affirming care.

by Sarah Gantz | Thursday, May 29, 2025 | 1:25 PM EDT

Penn Medicine will no longer provide gender-affirming surgery to patients under age 19, effective this week, citing new federal orders targeting such procedures among transgender minors.

President Donald Trump in January issued an executive order that bars federal funding for gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or surgeries, for transgender patients under age 19. Such care helps patients to have a body that matches their gender identity and has wide acceptance within the medical community.

The order directed agencies to cease grants and other funding that could be used for gender-affirming care and instructed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review the terms of publicly funded coverage under Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

Penn is among a growing number of health systems across the country — including UPMC and Penn State Health — that have backed off gender-affirming care services for youth under threat of losing critical federal financial support.

There’s a lot more at the original.

I have long said that if actual adults want to go through this stupidity, that’s on them. But that we don’t allow minors to legally consent to sex, something which is usually not harmful, which isn’t somehow a life-altering choice unless pregnancy occurs, and is a normal part of human life, but that some places were allowing them to consent to quack medical procedures is a truly mind-boggling, and a thoroughly irresponsible and senseless thing. One thing I have never been able to understand is how insurance companies would ever cover such practices, given that the chances of huge lawsuits are such a great possibility.

Were I Chief Executive Officer for an insurance company which covered physicians and hospitals, I’d have made it clear that such coverage did not extend to “gender affirming care” or “sex reassignment surgeries.”

The first four quoted paragraphs do not display any particular bias, but it can be found much further down:

Gender-affirming care broadly refers to medical services intended for people whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth, a condition known as gender dysphoria. Care could range from voice coaching and hair removal to hormone therapy and surgery.

“(T)he sex they were assigned at birth” is the typical pro-transgender phrase so commonly used by the media, but it is wholly unscientific. If sex is “assigned” in any manner, it is done at conception, by whether the sperm cell which fertilizes the egg is carrying an X or a Y chromosome; this is a fact which has been known for a hundred years. We can (sort of) excuse King Henry VIII for blaming his first two wives for giving birth to girls and not boys — how dare they! — because it was not known in the sixteenth century that it is the father’s sperm, not the woman’s egg, which determined sex, but we do know that now, and we know that it happens at conception, not birth. Sex is recognized at birth, as it has been ever since human being realized what sex is, and for the advocates to say it is “assigned at birth” is a wholly political statement, designed to sway the argument.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Gender and Sexuality Development Program is one of the nation’s largest clinics for transgender and gender nonbinary youth. CHOP did not respond to a request for comment about the status of its gender-affirming care services.

CHOP is one of the nation’s premier pediatric hospitals, and it’s disappointing, though hardly unexpected, that they would be participating in the “gender” idiocy. Chromosomes cannot be changed, and biological development cannot be altered. While puberty blockers can arrest adult development, they would need to be started when a child is eight or nine years old, far, far, far too young to be taking such decisions, and far, far, far too irresponsible for adults to be taking such decisions for their children. Artificial hormones can be administered, and surgical mutilation can cut off healthy genitals and breasts, but these things cannot be replaced by anything which actually functions like the real thing. Males are males and females are females, regardless of what the propaganda says, regardless of what any particular patient might wish.

Once a ‘transgender’ person reaches legal adulthood, if he wants to undergo such procedures, that’s his business. But leave the kids alone.