When Children's Hospital de Los Angeles first told thousands of patients who closed their pediatric gender clinic last month, Jesse Thorn was distressed, but surely he could quickly find a new local care team for his children.
But by the time the Transyouth Health and Development Center officially closed its doors on Tuesday, the father of three children was making plans to flee from the country.
“They are pointing to who can,” Thorn said. “[I’m afraid] Police will appear at my door because I took my son to see their doctor. ”
Until this week, Children's was among the largest and largest pediatric gender clinics in the United States, and one of the few that provide puberty blockers, hormones and surgical procedures for trans young people over public insurance.
The closure of the renowned program indicates a broader unraveling in the availability of attention throughout the country, experts said. That includes in former safe shelters such as California, New York and Illinois, where state laws that protect specific medical care on transmission are falling apart under growing legal pressure and the bureaucratic administration of the arms by the Trump administration.
In the last week, the University of Chicago Medicine and Children's National in DC announced that they will end or drastically climb the services for trans young people, after similar movements by Stanford Medicine, the Medical Center of the University of Pittsburgh and the Children's Hospital in the County of Orange.
“There is a rapid collapse of the provision of this attention in the blue states,” said Alejandra Caraballo, civil rights lawyer and legal instructor in Harvard. “At the end of 2025, most care will effectively be prohibited.”
Some parents in Los Angeles say that the Department of Justice will use private medical data that quoted from the largest pediatric hospital in California to remove their children.
“It's absolutely scary,” said Maxine, the mother of a patient from the Children's Hospital, who refused to give his last name for fear of attacks against his son.
“I am very afraid that the Department of Justice and this interim Attorney will go to the parents and use the female genital mutilation law … to process parents and separate my son,” he said.
On July 9, Atty. General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Justice was citing medical records of patients with more than 20 doctors and clinics, the last one in a ride of legal and technical maneuvers against suppliers that take care of trans young people.
“The professionals and medical organizations that mutilated children at the service of a deformed ideology will be responsible for this Department of Justice,” Bondi said in a press release that announces the measure.
The children would not say if it had been cited or if it had delivered the records that respond to the government's demand.
The Department of Justice was already investigating pediatric specialists for a litany of alleged crimes, from deceptive commercial practices to billing fraud. Federal health agencies have promised to retain funds from institutions that continue to provide affirmative attention.
“These threats are no longer theoretical,” wrote children's hospital executives in an internal email that announces the closing on June 12. “[They are] Threatening our ability to serve the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on Chla for life care. ”
The defenders say that the attention affirmed by gender is also saving life. They indicate the statistics, disputed by the federal government and some experts, which show high suicide rates among trans young people.
In June, the decision to close the clinic was widely convicted. The defenders said that Children's Hospital had “thrown the trans children under the bus” without taking into account the state law.
Few say that now.
“You could see children with leukemia cut in their chemotherapy therapy unless these hospitals stop providing attention to trans people,” Caraballo said. “If one of the largest children's hospitals could not assume that burden, I don't see that many others can do it.”
Others agreed.
“No matter what California or any other state has done to say: 'We want to protect these children', unless they can write checks equivalent to the amount of money that is being lost, [programs close]”Said Dara E. Purvis, a law professor at the University of Temple.
Until now, the Trump administration has painted parents as victims of “radical gender ideology.”
Some experts warned that, as the government squeezes the screws to doctors and hospitals, it is likely that trans adolescents and their families seek hormones outside the medical system, even through gray market channels.
“We have seen this with abortion,” Caraballo said. “People are going to get it for the way they can.”
It is feared that families can face the prosecution for continuing to seek medicines, similar to the positions that are presented against mothers who have secured abortion pills for their teenagers.
“We are working with Congress on existing criminal laws related to female genital mutilation to more solidly protect children,” said the head of the Cabinet of the Department of Justice, Chad Mizelle, during a workshop of the Federal Commerce Commission entitled “The dangers of 'Gender Affirmation Attention' for minors.”
“We are using all the tools of the Department of Justice to address this problem,” said Mizelle.
For now, dozens of hospitals in California still provide attention that the genre affirms, including hormonal therapy and surgical procedures.
But the list changes almost day by day.
“Even the programs that may have been operating a month ago are not operating now,” said Terra Russell-Slavin, impact director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “There is a lot of concern about being public even to offer attention because these agencies become objectives.”
With medical care in which their children trust under threat and few promised protections of the state, some families are not safe from what they will bring in the coming months.
For an Orange County father, who asked not to be appointed for fear of reprisals against his trans son, future travel plans are suddenly in danger.
He said that only half of his child's identity documents coincide with their gender, and they have been warned that they do not try to change others.
“He cannot leave the country because he cannot get a matching passport,” said the father.
For Maxine, Los Angeles' mother, balance the banal with the existential is a daily tension.
“My son only lives his life. They want to go to concerts, they want to go back to school, they don't know that none of this is happening,” said the mother. “You must experience this intense fear while having a normal home for everyone else.”
