A Reckoning for Experimenting With America's Children

On Tuesday, the Trump administration delivered a major victory for children and parents, announcing a final rule ending federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.

For America First Policy Institute, the announcement marks an important milestone in a fight that began years before this issue was a national conversation.

In February 2023, AFPI researchers published a comprehensive report examining the risks, evidence gaps, and irreversible consequences associated with these procedures for children. That same year, I traveled to dozens of states warning policymakers, parents, and communities about what vulnerable children were facing. At the time, even suggesting that minors should be protected from life-altering sex-rejecting procedures was controversial.

AFPI’s research stressed an especially important point: Most children with gender dysphoria do not carry that condition into adulthood.

Think about that.

Children experiencing distress about their bodies, sometimes alongside confusion and self-consciousness that can accompany adolescence, were placed on a medical pathway carrying potentially lifelong consequences.

And for years, we were told to shut up and trust the experts.

Parents were called hateful for wanting more time and more answers. Doctors who spoke up put their careers on the line. And those of us who argued that children should be allowed to grow up before making permanent decisions about their bodies were called extremists.

We were told that puberty blockers were harmless and reversible. Cross-sex hormones were "compassionate care." Removing the healthy breasts of teenage girls was somehow medicine.

And if you questioned any of it, you were the problem.

The Trump administration is no longer accepting those explanations. The Department of Health and Human Services found “significant evidence gaps” and “serious safety concerns” in reaching its final rule.

But ending federal funding is only the beginning. America must now confront and unravel the damage that was done.

Americans deserve answers about how powerful medical institutions came to insist these treatments were necessary for vulnerable children. They deserve transparency from pharmaceutical companies and the governing bodies of medicine. Doctors who succumbed to ideology must be held accountable for failing parents and pressuring healthy children into becoming patients for life.

A 12-year-old cannot entirely grasp infertility. A 14-year-old cannot fully comprehend what it means to permanently remove healthy breasts. A teenager in distress cannot be expected to fully comprehend how a decision made at 14 may affect life into adulthood.

Doctors were supposed to protect our children. Instead, too many of those who swore to “do no harm” surrendered to ideology and forced it onto our children.

The Trump administration is now doing what Washington should have done years ago: ending taxpayer-funded experimentation on our children.

Now we need accountability and care for those who were harmed.

In March, AFPI hosted more than 50 detransitioners in Washington, D.C. for Detransition Awareness Day.

We listened to firsthand accounts by victims like Soren Aldaco and Forrest Smith. They described the consequences of decisions made when they were vulnerable. Some had been prescribed powerful hormones as minors. Others lost healthy body parts they’ll never get back. Many are now living with physical complications, infertility concerns, regret, and the psychological burden of realizing that the institutions tasked with protecting them instead turned them into lifelong patients.

We must protect the children who are still at risk, care for those who were harmed, and unravel every piece of the ideological machinery that allowed this to happen in the first place.

Tuesday’s announcement marks the beginning of the end of one of the most reckless medical experiments ever conducted on America’s children.

Now the reckoning has begun.

Because “we were wrong” will never be enough for the young Americans who have to live with the consequences.

Ashley Hayek is the mother of five children, Executive Vice President of America First Policy Institute, and President of America First Works.

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