Parents of Trans Kids Slam Mount Sinai for Permanently Ending Trans Youth Care

Por Shireen Akram-Boshar — Truthout

“They’re turning away children, and they’re refusing to provide care that is life-saving,” one parent said.

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On September 4, the Mount Sinai hospital system in New York City – one of the largest health networks in the city – agreed in a settlement with President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to permanently stop providing gender-affirming care for minors.

The settlement also included an agreement that the hospital system will pay an undisclosed financial penalty, and that it will allocate $2 million toward former patients who want to pursue “detransition.”

This marks the latest capitulation to the Trump administration that has left parents of transgender youth worrying what comes next.

Mount Sinai has claimed that the settlement was reached to protect trans youth, as the DOJ subpoenaed multiple NYC hospital systems in May, demanding the names and medical records of transgender minors who have received care at the networks. But others have pointed out that a court order was put in place in June blocking the release of these records, so the hospital system would not have needed to take this step. In addition, the hospital had preemptively, and quietly, stopped providing care to trans youth in February – meaning the September settlement has simply formalized what the hospital had already largely enacted.

Truthout spoke to two parents of transgender children who had received care from the Mount Sinai system, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“I was shocked,” one parent, who we’ll call S, told Truthout. “The first thing I heard about was that Mount Sinai had been subpoenaed and that they were told to hand over records of any minors who had gotten care at the hospital, which would include my son. He was 15 when he started getting gender-affirming care at Mount Sinai.”

S told Truthout that she was shocked to be seeing such rapid changes in a state like New York, which is “supposed to be a sanctuary state for trans people.”

When S found out that Mount Sinai would be cancelling youth gender-affirming care entirely, she was “outraged,” she said. “When I think about my son, in his own words, he said that if he had not received gender-affirming care, he would be dead. He was so distressed. He wanted his body to match his understanding of himself, and without taking testosterone, he wouldn’t have that.”

Now that her son has been on hormone replacement therapy for six years, “he says he feels like a whole person,” S said.

Another parent, J, had just managed to start care for her 12-year-old daughter at Mount Sinai. “She had a lot of hoops to jump through to even be seen by the doctor, so we went through a lot of appointments and tests to even get started,” J told Truthout. “And on our first appointment, we were informed that they were going to end these youth services. So we got one treatment before we had to find another provider.”

Trying to access trans youth care in the Trump era has been “dystopian,” J said – and difficult to explain to her 12-year-old child. “I don’t want to scare her. All of this stuff is happening around her and we’re just doing our best to protect her. But when we hear things like [the DOJ is asking the hospital for] a list, we imagine the worst. Are we going to get rounded up and thrown in a cage like what ICE is doing? That’s the kind of stuff your mind goes to.”

J added that health insurance companies are now denying coverage of her daughter’s gender-affirming medication. “The medication that she takes is $50,000 for one dose, which she needs twice a year,” she said.

Mount Sinai is not the only hospital system in a Democratic-leaning state to stop offering gender-affirming care for trans youth. This year, hospital systems in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have agreed to stop providing gender-affirming care to youth due to DOJ pressure and threats to their funding. Hospitals in Washington, Michigan, and California have also restricted or cut their transgender youth programs, and a court battle on such care is currently underway in Colorado.

“I think it’s totally outrageous,” S told Truthout. The hospital systems are “failing their patients,” and “caving in to an authoritarian government that is trying to take away basic rights and bodily autonomy from people. It’s up to a family and a child to make those decisions for themselves, and not for the government to intervene and tell them what they can or can’t do.”

Parents and other activists have begun to organize in response. On September 8, an estimated 250 protestors picketed outside Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side against the settlement.

“People are not going to take it. They’re very angry. Parents are very angry, and scared,” explained S, who was at the protest.

While protests against the hospitals’ capitulations to Trump began as small and isolated, they have grown, she said, adding: “I think people are starting to realize that it’s a slippery slope. When they take away the rights of one group of people in society, they’re going to take away the rights of everybody.”

And it is not only the Trump administration that is to blame. “The board members at Mount Sinai need to be protested,” J said. “They did not have to stop serving transgender youth. That is something that they chose to do.”

“People need to understand that they’re turning away children, and they’re refusing to provide care that is life-saving,” J added.

The parents also said that the response from local officials has not been sufficient. In response to these attacks by the DOJ, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced in June that he would be allocating $15 million to expand trans care, and that he would be launching a new transgender health program in the city. However, the program only serves trans adults.

“That was a great disappointment to our community,” S said. “We wanted to see more care for trans kids. I definitely wanted the city government to say, look, this is our way of standing up for trans people, by giving the kids care at this new clinic.”

“Mamdani is probably doing everything he can. I don’t doubt that he cares about trans kids in this city. But I would like him to be more vocal,” she added.

She also asked why New York Attorney General Letitia James has not done more to defend trans youth. “Where is our state attorney general in all this? They should be bringing up charges against hospitals that are not serving patients.”

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Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.

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Fonte: Truthout