In short order, UCSF may be one of the last, if not the last place in California for teenagers under the age of 19 to seek gender-affirming surgeries, with Stanford Medicine bowing out of the practice earlier this month.

Stanford Medicine has confirmed that it has "paused" providing gender-affirming surgeries for youths under the age of 19, effective June 2, 2025, due to the threat of legal action and funding loss from the federal government under the Trump regime. This decision comes just as one of the largest providers of such care to trans youth in the country, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, has opted to close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development entirely as of July 1, citing "no viable path forward except to close" the center.

Stanford will continue providing gender-affirming care in the form of puberty-blockers and hormones to trans youth, the organization says. And as far as we know, UCSF's Gender Affirming Health Program will continue providing this care, as well as surgeries for those youths with extreme gender dysphoria.

The Stanford Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Clinic dates back to 2015.

As the Chronicle reports today, surgeries are rare and generally not recommended for youths under 18 anyway — with the most common surgeries for teens being "top surgeries" or breast removals for trans males. These account for maybe a few hundred cases per year nationwide, while fewer than 20 youths across the country undergo genital procedures before adulthood each year.

Trump's executive order which threatens the withholding of federal grant money to institutions providing gender-affirming care of any kind was blocked by a federal judge in March. But a Supreme Court decision last week affirmed the right of states of ban gender-affirming care for minors, allowing a Tennessee law — and by extension laws in two dozen other states — to continue denying this care and threatening legal action against medical providers.

This will most certainly cause more distress for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, as well as their parents, and is already leading some to relocate to states with less discriminatory laws to seek this often life-saving medical care.

California is one of those states.

In an opinion piece in the LA Times this week, USC journalism professor Gabriel Kahn suggests that the board at Los Angeles Children's Hospital made a cynical decision to cease providing care to trans youth in order to spare the rest of the hospital's patients from the Trump administration's wrath.

"In caving to blackmail, they have endorsed the administration’s bigotry," Kahn writes. "They have demonstrated that trans youth are expendable. The board has made it clear that this group of patients is not as deserving of care as others... This time, it was trans youth. Who will it be next time? Disabled children? Children born outside the U.S.?"

Previously: Supreme Court's Conservatives Let Stand Tennessee's Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Youth

Photo via stanford.edu