Italy is moving to limit access to sex rejecting interventions to minors, with the cabinet recently approving a draft law–still awaiting parliamentary approval–prohibiting persons under 18 from accessing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The bill would also create a national registry at the Italian Medicines Agency to monitor patient outcomes. In a statement, the Italian government defended the proposed law as necessary “to protect the health of minors” and introduce “effective data monitoring.” The draft also indicates that Italy’s Health Ministry plans to create new treatment protocols for gender medicine. NBC speculates that while the bill might undergo revision, there is a high chance it will be approved given the makeup of parliament.
According to National Review, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are planning to announce a proposed federal rule banning Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals that provide sex-rejecting interventions to minors for the treatment of gender dysphoria. “The rule essentially says that a hospital cannot get funding from Medicare or Medicaid for any of their services if they participate in child mutilation,” a senior administration official told National Review. “In short, the concept is – hospitals cannot participate in Medicare of Medicaid if they provide sex trait modification services to minors, full stop.” The move marks the latest development in the government’s full-court press to curb pediatric gender medicine, joining recent initiatives by the FTC, the FBI, and the Department of Justice more broadly.
Last Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed two pieces of legislation prohibiting dysphoric minors from accessing sex-rejecting interventions. “Medical decisions made at a young age can carry lifelong consequences, and these bills represent a balanced, bipartisan effort to protect children,” Ayotte said. H.B. 377 prohibits dysphoric minors from accessing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, while H.B. 712 prohibits minors from accessing a number of surgical procedures, including what’s known euphemistically as “top” surgeries, or mastectomies. Despite opposition from Democrats, the NH Journal notes that a July 2025 NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll found that New Hampshire voters back the bans by a margin of 69 to 16 percent.
A coalition of fifteen states led by California and New York are suing the Trump administration over aspects of the executive order Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. In particular, the lawsuit takes aim at provisions of Section 8 of the EO, which empowers the Department of Justice to enforce the directive and to investigate offending providers and health care entities. The suit argues that the EO’s “Denial of Care” order is illegal and that the enforcement actions have “have no basis in law. “No federal law prohibits, much less criminalizes, the provision or receipt of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents.” The suit also goes on to argue that the EO infringes on states’ ability to regulate medicine, which is recognized as a police power reserved to states under the 10th amendment. Notably, the structure of the argument is similar to the argument launched by Republican states critical of the Biden administration’s federal rule interpreting section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act to include non-discrimination protections for “gender identity.” The rule was explicit that a categorical refusal to provide pediatric medical transition procedures—or refusal to provide a procedure for the purpose of medical transition that hospitals would otherwise offer for a different clinical purpose—would violate Section 1557 of the ACA, which many felt infringed on their ability to regulate medicine within their borders.
The Daily Caller News Foundation has obtained hundreds of pages of messages from a Google group run by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), where providers “strategized about how to impose radical gender ideology into clinical settings, including methods for coercing parents to accept child sex-change procedures.” One of the more damning messages involves a practitioner working with a “mildly developmentally delayed” female patient. After the patient revealed that they were no longer interested in hormones or surgical interventions, the clinician reached out to other WPATH members for "resources" to convince her to reconsider. “This is not sound clinical practice. It’s aiming to proselytize a harmful ideology. It disregards the biological reality of male and female, while overlooking the co-occurring distress these adolescents are facing…” said Do No Harm’s Medical Director, Dr. Kurt Miceli.
In The Dispatch, I wrote about the way the progressive media often covers the debate over “affirming care,” and argue that the nature of the messaging is likely to exacerbate mental health issues among trans-identified youth. More specifically, I argue that the progressive media’s apocalyptic rhetoric is likely to trigger “rejection sensitivity” and other negative perceptual biases associated with many of the mental health conditions frequently observed among trans-identified minors and young adults. Going further, I also build off psychologist J. Michael Bailey’s critique of “minority stress theory,” a theory which presupposes that elevated rates of psychiatric disorders among the trans-identified are caused by “stigma” and “discrimination.” I explain how minority stress theory falls short when applied to many trans-identified youths and expound on how temperament and mental health status may provide a better interpretation of the research literature.
The Health Minister for Northern Ireland, Mike Nesbitt, defends his department’s announcement that £800,000 in funds would be allocated towards Northern Ireland’s Gender Identity Services. Because the health minister said he “wanted Northern Ireland to be part of the UK-wide ban on puberty blockers,” the article implies that the allocated funds would go towards psychological interventions and psychiatric services. However, one assembly member from the Democratic Unionist Party felt that the minister “should have brought it to his executive colleagues to have a robust public discussion and debate about what is in the best interest of our young people and wider society…” which implies uncertainty about the how the funds will ultimately be used.
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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