This week marks a new level of federal attacks on bodily autonomy and gender-affirming care (GAC) for young people, with likely ramifications for people across the country. On Thursday, December 18th, the Trump administration announced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had promulgated two proposed rules that, if finalized, would severely limit access to GAC for transgender youth. The first rule prohibits Medicare and Medicaid-participating hospitals from providing GAC to minors, requiring such patients to seek care elsewhere or potentially forego the care altogether. The second rule prohibits the use of Federal Medicaid or CHIP dollars to fund GAC for minors and those under 19 years of age, respectively, jeopardizing providers’ ability to provide health care to their patients. In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a third rule which, if finalized, would seek to limit anti-discrimination protections for transgender people under federal disability law.  

Furthering the Trump administration’s agenda, the U.S. House of Representatives also passed two bills restricting access to GAC for minors. The first creates a penalty of up to ten years imprisonment for anyone who provides or attempts to provide GAC to a minor. The second blocks the use of federal Medicaid funds from being used for GAC for minors. This marks a new level of federal attacks on health care and personal decision making.  

These attacks are straight out of the anti-abortion playbook. For decades, anti-abortion lawmakers have been chipping away at access to care at both the state and federal level, attaching criminal penalties to necessary health care, and now anti-transgender lawmakers are doing the same thing. These coordinated attacks attempt to punish providers for following their best medical judgment, interfere in the practice of medicine and the patient-provider relationship, mischaracterize the current state of the scientific evidence, and create a dangerous precedent of attacking politically disfavored health care.  

Let’s be clear: this is blatant political interference where doctors and scientists should be leading. Anti-abortion organizations and lawmakers have likewise politically pressured this administration to remove or severely restrict access to abortion care, including by mischaracterizing scientific evidence, and this is the same strategy. Providers should not have to live in fear of offering critical, lifesaving care to their patients, and patients should be able to access the health care they need and deserve. These attacks are nothing more than an attempt to continue promoting the troubling ideology that politicians should have control over our bodies and our futures. The Center has sued the Trump administration to investigate such political interference in abortion access – we will continue to be vigilant for anti-abortion strategies being used in other contexts and stand with our partners to defend the right to access critical health care.