Rantz: Seattle Children’s Hospital pauses trans surgeries on minors thanks to Trump admin.

Seattle Children’s Hospital reportedly halted all transgender surgeries on minors just hours before a scheduled breast removal on a 16-year-old patient.

The decision was apparently prompted by a Trump administration executive order directing agencies to cut federal funding and grants to hospitals that provide “destructive and life-altering” gender-transition procedures. The executive order does not prevent healthcare for minor patients who identify as transgender. Rather, it prevents specific procedures or treatment, such as the use of puberty blockers and sex hormones or surgical interventions, if a hospital is federally funded. There are providers that do not depend on or receive federal funding that are not impacted by the executive order.

Seattle Children’s is not the only hospital pausing transgender surgeries on minors. Denver Health in Colorado, University of Colorado Health, Virginia Commonwealth University and Children’s Hospital of Richmond, and University of Virginia Health are amongst the hospitals stopping so-called “gender-affirming care” in response to the executive order.

There are legal efforts underway to block the executive order.

Rantz Exclusive: King County Executive proposes defunding over $85 million from public safety

Teen patient doesn’t get breasts removed after Trump transgender surgery executive order

A feature in The Stranger reported on the move by Seattle Children’s after talking with the parents of a 16-year-old biological girl who identifies as a boy. He was scheduled to undergo “masculinizing top surgery,” which means breast tissue is permanently removed. The patient was offered therapy in the interim.

The family said the hospital informed them the decision was a result of the Trump executive order on transgender surgeries. But Seattle Children’s Hospital has not made a public statement at this time. The hospital’s website scrubbed its “Surgical Gender Affirmation Program” page, though the Gender Clinic’s page, which is not geared exclusively towards children, remains.

The family of the transgender child says they planned to move out of the United States if Donald Trump was elected, claiming “things would get very bad very fast.”

“Under an ideal circumstance, I would stay and spend my life on the resistance, but I am disabled and I have a trans child who is also disabled. He’s right, we should get out,” the mom told The Stranger.

The Trump executive order on transgender surgeries on minors is consistent with public opinion

The Trump executive order seeking to stop transgender surgeries and other life-altering procedures on minors is both a welcome development and widely popular. But left-wing media outlets and far-left lawmakers and activists would have you think differently.

A May 2023 Washington Post/KFF poll indicated that 68% of adults opposed access to puberty-blocking medication for transgender children aged 10 to 14, and 58% opposed access to hormonal treatments for those aged 15 to 17. Similar polls from Pew Research (2022), Harvard-Harris (2023), and Rasmussen (2024) showed similar majority opposition.

Though left-wing outlets and lawmakers claim this is discriminatory, Americans don’t see it that way, with majorities across many polls saying discrimination against transgender people is wrong.

Democrats in and out of media are purposefully misleading you on the data

The research around gender-affirming care on minors is intentionally misleading, too. It’s why so many are rightly calling for an end to irreversible surgical or hormonal interventions on minors who may not actually be transgender.

“(Gender-affirming care is) associated with happier, healthier lives for kids experiencing gender dysphoria. The regret rate is extremely low,” Vivian McCall writes in The Stranger. This is false.

A recent University of Washington study, in partnership with Seattle Children’s Hospital, showed virtually no improvement in mental health outcomes for teen transgender patients receiving gender-affirming care. That didn’t stop the university from falsely claiming otherwise. In the United Kingdom, the government banned the use of puberty blockers for children after independent experts found an unacceptable risk to patients.

One doctor purposefully withheld negative data

What’s worse, a leading and influential medical advocate for puberty blockers purposefully withheld publishing the results of a long-term study allegedly because it showed no mental health benefits.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy initially said the results were due to the transgender-identified children being “in really good shape” when they started the study and ended equally happy after the two-year-long study. However, in-depth reporting by the New York Times shows that the doctor’s claim was false, as the study previously described the patients as significantly depressed or suicidal before treatment.

And claims of lack of regret, in this context, are misleading. There’s extremely limited data studying regret in adults who transitioned as adolescents.

Why do Democrats ignore data to push for transgender surgery on minors?

Progressives love to wrap themselves in the flag of moral superiority, and nothing makes them feel more heroic than “saving” marginalized groups. That’s why they aggressively push gender-affirming care — including irreversible surgeries — on teens while pretending there’s zero downside. The narrative has to be all positive, or else they’d have to admit they’re advocating for something that is harming kids.

They amplify the voices of unhinged parents of so-called transgender teens, pretending it’s normal to leave a country after a president they don’t like is elected, while ignoring stories of de-transitioners.

They silence detractors, demonize dissenting doctors, and dismiss de-transitioners as irrelevant because their real goal isn’t helping transgender youth — it’s cementing their status as champions of the oppressed. If they acknowledged the risks, the regret, or the fact that a kid might need therapy, not hormones, their entire house of virtue-signaling cards would collapse.

So they keep pushing, consequences be damned. Because in their world, it’s better to be a self-declared savior than to actually protect children from harm. Thankfully, President Donald Trump stepped up to help kids, leaving them with the right to pursue treatment when they’re adults and can make better informed decisions with less partisan needling from far-left adults.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3-7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on X, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz