UPMC to stop gender-affirming care for patients 18 and under by month's end

UPMC has confirmed it will end gender-affirming care for patients 18 and younger in response to the Trump administration’s policies aimed at transgender youth.

A spokesperson for UPMC, the region’s largest hospital network, said federal guidance has made it clear clinicians who provide care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy run the risk of criminal prosecution. UPMC will continue to provide behavioral health support and other care “within the bounds of the law,” the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson declined to say when care will end, but impacted families have been told June 30 is the cutoff.

Del Treese, a resident of Pittsburgh’s Marshall-­Shadeland neighborhood, first learned his 16-year-old son’s hormone therapy may be in jeopardy in May through a digital notification from UPMC. It urged the family to meet “as soon as possible” with a doctor to discuss “what recent federal directives mean for your child’s treatment plan.”

A couple of weeks later, a UPMC physician broke the news.

“It’s terrible,” Treese said. “All you want to do when your child is hurting or needs something is provide it for them.”

Gender-affirming care is backed by all major U.S. medical associations as valuable to the health and well-being of youth experiencing gender dysphoria, the psychological distress caused by a difference in one’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth. Such care is not, however, sought by all young transgender people.

The Trump administration takes a much dimmer view of gender-affirming care.

In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for stricter limitations on gender-affirming care and threatening to withhold federal funds from institutions that provide it. And, in April, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Department of Justice to support prosecution of doctors who administer gender-affirming care.

None of this means gender-affirming care for people 18 and younger is illegal, according to Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Executive orders can direct the government how to act, he noted, but they do not carry the same weight as legislation.

“This is no different than the threats the administration has lobbed against public education, against universities, against law firms,” Walczak said. “You see some capitulating and others fighting back, and the ones that are fighting back are by and large winning in court.”

UPMC’s unwillingness to push back against the Trump administration on transgender issues has frustrated advocates like Dena Stanley, executive director of Trans YOUniting. The Pittsburgh-based organization has been an ardent critic of UPMC since it canceled gender-affirming surgeries for patients 18 and younger earlier this year and is planning a rally Sunday outside the health care giant’s Downtown Pittsburgh headquarters.

“UPMC is choosing not to fight it,” Stanley said. “They’re choosing not to go forward with it because they feel trans individuals, they’re not important.”

For its part, UPMC said through a spokesperson it deeply empathizes with impacted patients and families.

Stanley thinks UPMC has signaled to smaller hospitals and clinics in the area it’s time to pull back on their gender-affirming care for youths.

In a statement to TribLive, Allegheny Health Network spokesman Dan Laurent did not specifically state whether the organization has changed its gender-affirming care policies since Trump returned to office but said it will comply with “all applicable laws.”

“We have traditionally provided very minimal such care for patients under 19, given our relatively small pediatrics specialty care footprint in the region,” Laurent added.