American Medical Association reaffirms support for trans health care after controversial statement

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

The American Medical Association (AMA) reaffirmed its support for gender-affirming care and said media outlets that reported a change in its policy (including LGBTQ Nation) misinterpreted a recent statement from the organization.

AMA’s March 2026 newsletter devoted a section to the debacle and explained that it all started in February when Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, held a meeting for the leaders of the nation’s major medical organizations to discuss why they all endorsed medical interventions for trans teenagers.

Sources told the Times that Dr. Oz’s tone was measured, rather than hostile, but that it was clear he hoped to sway the organizations away from supporting gender-affirming care for young trans people. At the meeting, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reportedly shocked everyone by announcing it was indeed changing its stance on gender-affirming care. 

The ASPS announced the change in its stance publicly on February 3, releasing a statement advising against conducting “gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery” on people under the age of 19. The ASPS based its statement on two recent reports from the U.K. and the U.S. that were widely criticized by transgender healthcare advocates as being biased.

Surgical interventions, however, are already almost never performed on minors. Trans minors don’t receive bottom surgery, though some teenagers who meet certain rigid requirements get top surgery or facial procedures.

The AMA newsletter explained that once ASPS released its statement, the AMA’s Executive Committee of the Board met to craft a statement to provide to probing media outlets.

“During our Board discussion, we were clear that we were not changing AMA policy,” the newsletter said, emphasizing that the statement was exclusively to be used if media outlets contacted the organization, rather than preemptively.

“While some media coverage characterized this as agreement with the ASPS statement, that phrasing did not come from the AMA,” the newsletter continued. “Unfortunately, how reporters frame their stories is beyond our control.”

The newsletter emphasized that the statement did not reflect a policy change or an endorsement of ASPS’s policy change: “AMA policy on gender-affirming care is unchanged. Our recent response to questions about ASPS’s position statement was intended to preserve—not diminish—access to gender-affirming care, and to clarify and reinforce what our policy has long reflected and standards of care. The AMA supports gender-affirming care as medically necessary per our policy.”

The language in AMA’s initial statement sowed chaos because it does state:  “In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”

But because gender-affirming surgery is already rare for minors, it seems AMA is trying to say it was merely reaffirming the position it has always held, which is that it supports non-surgical interventions for minors and, in rare cases, surgical ones.

At the time the ASPS walked back support for gender-affirming care, and many at least believed AMA did, too, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its own statement emphasizing it still fully endorses gender-affirming care. “The AAP continues to hold to the principle that patients, their families and their physicians — not politicians — should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them,” the statement read, according to the New York Times.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) also spoke out: “There is no definitive age or one-size-fits-all approach for every patient, which is why they are built on case-by-case assessments, involve experts on adolescent development, and are designed to support thoughtful and ethical shared decision-making in a multidisciplinary field.”

Recent studies have shown that trans youth tend to be consistent in their identities, even after a decade. The findings mirror what has overwhelmingly been found in studies on trans adults, that very few people detransition. A 2024 study found that 97% of trans youth don’t regret transitioning, and another study from the same year showed that fewer than 1% of patients who undergo gender-affirming surgical procedures end up regretting it. In fact, rates of regret are higher for people who get tattoos, elective plastic surgeries, bariatric weight loss surgeries, or have children, the study found.