On the City Journal podcast, MI Senior Fellow Leor Sapir interviews the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) co-founder, Zhenya Abbruzzese, about a controversial report published by Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services. The report, which concluded that pediatric medical transition is safe, effective and improves psychosocial functioning, was commissioned by the Utah legislature as part of the state’s moratorium on youth gender medicine. Abbruzzese contextualizes the Utah report and explains why its findings fail to dovetail with those from over a dozen systematic reviews. As SEGM and Do No Harm have pointed out in earlier analyses, the Utah report fails to meet the criteria for a systematic review—despite calling itself one—because it does not perform an evidence synthesis to evaluate the quality and reliability of evidence. The review also controversially avoids evaluating certain potential outcomes, like infertility, on minor patients. Moreover, several report advisors failed to disclose relevant conflicts of interest tied to rendering “affirming care” services, further calling into question the report’s integrity. You can watch the podcast on YouTube, and listen in on Spotify.
New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has announced plans to open a clinic devoted to “affirming care” in Corona, Queens for patients nineteen and older. Despite campaign promises from the Mamdani administration to protect access to care for minor patients, including promises to allocate 65$ million towards pediatric medical transition, the planned clinic will only serve adults. When asked about treatment for minors, City Health Commissioner Alister Martin expressed sympathy but suggested that they attempted to strike a balance between patient needs and political realities. “We are committed to this issue and want to make sure we provide the services and resources for youth,” Martin said. Still, “we don’t [want to] expose ourselves to clawbacks from the federal government, which disrupt the rest of the care that we can give.”
Earlier this week, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division launched a compliance review into four California public school districts regarding instruction on sexual orientation and “gender identity” in K-12 education. “The review will examine whether, and to what extent, the California School Districts have notified parents of their right to opt their children out of such instruction,” the DOJ press release reads. The review will also evaluate whether the school districts adhere to Title IX policies.
Writing in City Journal, Leor Sapir explains the significance of Senate Democrats and LGBTQ advocates notable decision to avoid mentioning or citing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in a recent hearing on the harms of pediatric medical transition held by the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). As Sapir notes, the entire field of gender medicine is essentially built on WPATH’s clinical practice guidelines, and both advocates—including Shannon Minter—and HELP Committee Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey have previously cited the organization in other contexts. WPATH’s list of scandals is long, and includes commissioning, and then suppressing, systematic evidence reviews after being caught “on the wrong foot” by the findings of the reviews whose findings failed to align with the goal of expanding access to treatment. “It’s possible that the failure to mention WPATH at last week’s hearing was just an oversight, but it’s more likely that the organization has become a liability for transgender advocacy groups (like Minter’s National Center for LGBTQ Rights) and their allies in the Democratic Party,” Sapir argues.
A new study looking at the utilization of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers among dysphoric youth in Oregon found that the number of patients receiving medical care increased overall among patients aged 8-17 between 2016-2023. The study relied on a multipayer claims database to identify patients with formal dysphoria diagnoses, and procedural codes for hormonal interventions. Notably, the average age of diagnosis was fourteen and the age for treatment initiation was fifteen, with nearly 75% of patients being natal females. While the authors maintain that utilization was low overall with only 23% of diagnosed youth accessing medical interventions, the “observed rate of medical GAC utilization exceeded recent national estimates from prior claims-based studies, which relied solely on commercially insured populations.” “By age 17, about 1 in 240 insured natal girls were taking testosterone and about 1 in 630 natal boys were taking estrogen in Oregon,” journalist Ben Ryan recently wrote, acknowledging that these figures were “three-fold higher for natal girls and nearly twice as high for natal boys” as figures from another prominent claims-based study.
In late May, a new federal rule—cutting across nearly all federal agencies—was proposed entitled “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance,” which would have major implications for grants across the federal government, including stipulations regarding the promotion of “gender ideology.” “It [the rule] also includes ending government sponsorship of gender ideology and other radical doctrines the previous administration sought to impose across the country through Federal funding programs,” the background of the proposed rule explains. In a section outlining proposed revisions, the rule is explicit that the federal government cannot fund “gender ideology” as defined by EO 14168 or the medical transition of dysphoric minors. The comment period for the rule will be open until 7/13/26.
Last week, the Michigan House voted in favor of House Bill 4467, which would prohibit doctors from providing sex-rejecting procedures to minor patients for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The bill would also create a private right of action for patients who were harmed as minors. “We’ve been told that these procedures are settled science, but systematic reviews out of the UK, Finland, Norway, and from our own Health and Human Services definitely say otherwise,” said State Rep. and bill sponsor Brad Paquette. “Lawmakers have a duty to uphold health policy of ‘do no harm,’ especially while considering the most vulnerable young people among us.” The bill now moves to the Senate.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley has denied a Department of Justice motion to dismiss a multi-state suit challenging a Trump administration executive order (14187), and companion memos, aiming to eliminate federal funding for sex-rejecting procedures for minors. “The Memos’ interpretations directly conflict with Plaintiff States’ laws protecting transgender adolescents’ access to gender-affirming care, which were enacted in exercise of Plaintiff States’ traditional authority to pass laws regulating medicine and to safeguard its citizens health and welfare,” Kelley wrote in the ruling. Drawing heavily on the Supreme Court case the U.S. v. Skremtti, Kelley maintained that states are afforded “wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty...”
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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