A federal judge in Baltimore Thursday temporarily blocked President Trump's executive orders that threatens to cut off federal funding to hospitals providing gender-affirming care to people younger than 19.
Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown filed a separate suit over Trump's order last week and a hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Seattle Children's Hospital is supporting the legal challenge. But the hospital, along with others across the country, has already halted some surgeries.
Reporter Vivian McCall, who covers queer culture and politics for The Stranger, spoke to KNKX Morning Edition host Kirsten Kendrick about it.
Click “Listen” above to hear their conversation, or find the transcript below.
Transcript
Note: This transcript is provided for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.
KNKX Morning Edition host Kirsten Kendrick: You were the first to report that Seattle Children’s postponed one teenager’s gender-affirming surgery indefinitely, allegedly to comply with one of the president’s orders. What did you find?
The Stranger Staff Writer Vivian McCall: So, a 16 year old scheduled for a masculinizing top surgery on the early morning of February 4th, basically got a call from the hospital the afternoon before and hospital staff told him he wouldn’t get his surgery because of Donald Trump’s order, which is one of four the president has signed to limit the civil rights for transgender people, really, in the last three-ish weeks.
And he’s on the bus, gets home, tells his parents, and his mom calls the hospital back, obviously curious – 'like, what is going on with my son’s surgery?' But staff couldn’t really tell her more. She doesn’t get a call back that evening. So, they basically decide, let’s just go to the hospital our regular call time. They wait for a couple hours.
They eventually have a conversation with two staff and they tell them that the hospital could risk losing federal funds and grants over their kid’s surgery, and that was just way too much of a risk for other children.
Kendrick: And why did they say that?
McCall: Because that is a risk. Part of Trump’s order does threaten federal research grants and federal funds for hospitals, which – if you know anything about hospitals – makes up a lot of the money that goes into hospitals. But, the order doesn’t make any distinction between surgery, or hormone replacement therapy, or puberty blockers.
But so far, it looks like the hospital only paused gender-affirming surgeries. So, it’s certainly not a clinical decision, and it’s not a straight ahead interpretation of the order either. So it’s really unclear if the hospital reacted too quickly, or if it was employing a strategy that backfired. Or, it’s also unclear if the hospital even had to comply with Trump’s order in the first place. There’s a lot of “I don’t know.”
Kendrick: And there have been protests...
McCall: That’s right.
Kendrick: ...against Seattle Children’s for their action pausing these types of surgeries. Can you help convey why there are so many strong feelings about the decision?
McCall: I think anybody who has a kid can probably relate to being upset if your child’s medical care was disrupted, especially last minute. On another level, none of this care is clinically controversial. It’s not medically controversial. It’s politically controversial. And the language in these orders is quite dehumanizing. So the way that people feel, is that the hospital is essentially complying in advance.
And there’s a ton of misconceptions around gender-affirming care in the first place. And they’re used to hearing this about their kids, about their friends, about their family: “This care is experimental.” It’s not, it’s an evidence-based care, it goes back decades and decades and decades. They hear that kids are getting rushed into gender-affirming care by the thousands and then regretting it, which is totally contrary to their experience of going through waiting periods and counseling, and puberty blockers and hormones. Nobody is just ending up on an operating table. That just isn’t how this works. You know, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Kendrick: Finally, Vivian, what is not being addressed, in your view, in these conversations surrounding this type of surgery and this type of treatment?
McCall: I think we’re actually focusing so much on the treatment that we’re not asking 'why are we talking about this treatment that impacts so few people as if it’s a major policy discussion in the United States?' This is something that’s been incredibly politicized. The language of these orders, it doesn’t just defy the reality of the science and asserts this new truth, it uses these terms that equate transgender people and transgender treatment to science experiments. That should worry anybody in America. Because that kind of divisive language, that really sets the stage for a kind of discrimination that we would be ashamed of, I think, if we looked back on this in years to come.
Kendrick: Alright Vivian, thank you so much for coming in and talking with me about this.
McCall: Thank you very much for having me.
Kendrick: Vivian McCall covers queer culture and politics for The Stranger.
Vivian reached out to Seattle Children's for this story. The hospital responded with a statement saying it is "seeking clarity to safeguard the best interests of its patients and workforce."
KNKX also contacted Seattle Children's again to ask whether gender-affirming surgeries are still on hold, after the Baltimore ruling blocking Trump's order, We have not yet heard back.
