Texas Children’s Hospital must create country’s first “detransition clinic” under legal settlement with state

Unclear what services clinic will provide

Texas Children’s, one of the world’s leading pediatric hospitals based in the heart of Houston’s medical center, did not say how it will roll out its clinic or what services it will provide, though the hospital said in the statement that the clinic will include “supportive, multidisciplinary services we already deliver to all patients who need our care.”

Detransitioning is the stopping or reversal of transitioning care by social, medical or legal means, and it is rare for people to regret transitioning after taking hormone therapy and surgical interventions.

On the clinical side, detransitioning could mean stopping hormone treatment or procedures to reverse previous surgeries. Similar to transitioning, detransitioning requires intensive mental health assessments to root out other factors that might be creating the desire to stop transitioning, according to research. Common reasons for destransitioning include lack of family support, financial barriers and social pressure.

When someone chooses to detransition, “it is not normally because of healthcare complications,” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy director for the Transgender Education Network of Texas.

Segovia is concerned that access to mental healthcare will not be woven into the clinic’s services. In March, Paxton released an opinion saying that mental health providers licensed by the state cannot provide gender-transitioning care to minors under state law. It’s not clear if Paxton believes state law bars detransitioning mental healthcare as well.

For those who do want to detransition, the resources already exist, said Kellan Baker, senior advisor for the Movement Advancement Project, a national think tank that focuses on LGBTQ policies.

Detransitioning services, although they are rarely needed, can and have been offered properly when accompanied with mental health resources. But Baker said he’s not confident that this clinic, born out of a heated conflict between a hospital and the attorney general, has the best intentions for the transgender community.

“Texas Children’s is not creating this clinic — the Texas attorney general is creating it,” Baker said. “A clinic created by a politician via legal intimidation is not in the best interests of any patient. Doctors should be the ones making decisions about how to provide medical care, not politicians.”

‘Resource that no one is asking for’

Brad Pritchett, CEO of Equality Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for the LGBTQ community, said in a statement that the attorney general is “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.”

Pritchett said Texas’ politically-motivated detransition clinic “ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.”

Several medical associations including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association, have supported evidence-based gender-transitioning care as appropriate and medically necessary for children.

Pritchett added that it is “embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”

Dallas state Rep. Jessica González who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement that the settlement is “shameful, and is the furthering of an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society.”

Transgender people make up about 1% of the population, which is why, Segovia said, it is “infuriating” that the state is creating the detransition clinic as access to other healthcare services are struggling — such as rural hospitals and reproductive care.

Texas Children’s has to fully fund the clinic for five years, which will take away attention and limited resources from the hospital’s other departments such as care for children with cancer and infants with heart conditions, González said.

“Using a settlement to compel a hospital to build an ideologically framed clinic opens the door to more state interference in medical practice, more dangerous stigmatization that truly harms

young Texans, and, sadly, more lives lost in our nation’s suicide epidemic,” said González, one of the few only queer representatives in Texas.

Houston state Sen. Molly Cook, who is also openly queer, said Paxton is manufacturing a political spectacle because providers know how to help someone detransition and the state doesn’t need a clinic to train them on it.

“This is an asinine waste of money that is typical of Texas’s out-of-touch statewide leadership,” Cook said in a statement. “Texas Children’s already provides care for patients who choose to change a course of treatment.”

The need for such a clinic in Texas is made even smaller by the fact that the state’s ban on gender-transitioning care for minors has resulted in very few Texas children receiving such care statewide.

The five doctors that Paxton said Texas Children’s will need to fire adds to the four doctors he’s already sued to stop providing gender-affirming care. He’s also sued Children’s Health System of Texas, headquartered in Dallas, accusing them of violating SB 14. Some parts of Texas already suffer from a pediatric endocrinologist shortage in the wake of SB 14.

Segovia with the Transgender Education Network of Texas said she’s worried that other states will follow Texas’ lead in forcing more of these clinics to open.

“It’s terrifying what other states will take from this.”

May 16, 2026 0

Canadian doctors denied patients gender-affirming care, citing Trump’s executive order

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

McGill University in Quebec has denied gender-affirming care to at least two trans American students since March, when the school adopted a preemptive policy denying hormone replacement therapy over fears the Trump administration would retaliate, two sources say.

The new policy is an embarrassment, said an American staffer for The Montreal Trans Patient Union (TPU), who spoke to CBC on the condition of anonymity.

“These are American laws. American laws don’t apply in Canada,” they said.

The staffer and another member of TPU, Emma Gimbert, were at a meeting at McGill’s Student Wellness Hub in March when doctors brought up the change in policy.

“They said they wouldn’t be prescribing HRT to American citizens who were under 19 because of the executive order that Donald Trump issued,” Gimbert said.

The student was referring to Trump’s executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, issued a year ago in January, which directs federal agencies to carry out the American president’s crusade against transgender identity across the U.S. government.

“If you told me a month ago that a U.S. executive order would be influencing how doctors do their job across the border, I would have been like, no, that can’t be the case,” Gimbert said.

Canadians have been overwhelmingly critical of Trump and his trolling threats to their sovereignty since the start of his second term. McGill’s decision, from fiercely independent Quebec, no less, would seem antithetical to the rest of Canada’s posture facing Trump.

About 1000 Americans are currently enrolled at McGill, a public research university in Montreal known as “the Harvard of Canada.” Among nearly 40,000 students, a high proportion are from abroad.

Adding to the absurdity of a Canadian university bowing down to an American president, the decision may have been based in part on a clerical error.

The TPU staffer explained.

“The doctors said the reason for this was specifically the fact that the form the U.S. released had provisions for targeting Canadian doctors and taking down their information.”

The document in question was a snitch form issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to report health professionals administering gender-affirming care to minors in the U.S.

The drop-down menu, like many forms online, included the word “province” along with “state.”

Panicked administrators at McGill apparently thought that word put a target on Canadian medical professionals’ backs. HHS had even removed it by the time McGill denied the HRT to their American students.

McGill would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a policy barring Americans from gender-affirming care for fear of retaliation by Trump.

“Access to gender-affirming care is available to McGill students, including international students,” the university said in a statement.

“The medical aspects of this care are provided by licensed physicians. These decisions are not made by the university,” the school added, in a probably doomed effort to evade accountability from Canadians incensed at McGill’s failure to defend their independence.

“I think it’s definitely important for them to acknowledge what’s been going on because the way they’re currently treating this, it’s kind of covert,” Gimbert said.

“We know this is something that they’re aware of. It’s just not something that they’re publicly talking about.”

Added the American TPU staffer: “I mean, we don’t say that 18-year-old Americans can’t buy alcohol here because the drinking age in the U.S. is 21.”

May 14, 2026 0

Ohio Republicans are trying to strip transgender adults of health insurance coverage

A trans mom fled the US to Cuba with her child. The administration sent a plane to get them back.

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Authorities have charged a Utah transgender woman with kidnapping her own 10-year-old child.

According to an April 21 press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah, Rose Inessa-Ethington and her partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, have been charged with International Parental Kidnapping for allegedly taking Rose’s daughter, who is also trans, to Cuba without the consent or knowledge of Rose’s ex-wife, with whom she shared custody.

As the Washington Blade reports, in an affidavit filed on April 16, FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield alleges that the 10-year-old, identified as “Minor Victim 1” (MV 1), traveled to Canada with the Inessa-Ethingtons and Blue’s 3-year-old child on March 28 for a planned camping trip. But, Waterfield’s affidavit alleges, the group never arrived at either their hotel or the campground, and after MV 1 contacted her mother on March 28, the Inessa-Ethingtons were unreachable.

The group allegedly flew from Vancouver to Mexico City on March 29, and from there to Havana, Cuba, on April 1, which was confirmed by Mexican immigration authorities, according to the affidavit.

Rose Inessa-Ethington’s custody agreement with her former spouse, identified in the affidavit as “LB,” stipulated that MV 1 would be returned to LB on April 3. According to Waterfield, this never happened. According to Waterfield’s affidavit, “Interviews of MV 1’s family members provided significant concerns for MV 1’s well-being, as MV 1 was born a male, however, identifies as a female child, which is largely believed to be due to manipulation by Rose Inessa-Ethington. Concerns exist that MV 1 was transported to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty.”

Cuba’s national healthcare system has provided free gender-affirming surgeries since 2008, but the AP notes that gender-affirming surgery is banned for minors in the Caribbean nation. Gender-affirming surgery is difficult for adults to access in Cuba.

Upon searching the Inessa-Ethingtons’ home, authorities found “to-do” lists that included items like “Confirm Cuba limit- 100lb/50lb/1 bag/ 2 bags,” and “empty USU bank.” They also found a note that allegedly included instructions from a Washington, D.C., mental health therapist “on gender affirming medical care for children.” The affidavit does not specify whether this note included any information about gender-affirming surgeries, and it is unclear whether MV 1 was already receiving gender-affirming medical care.

A 2023 Utah law banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors — despite such surgeries being exceptionally rare — and instituted an indefinite moratorium on providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to minors for the purposes of gender-affirming care.

In her affidavit, Waterfield said that she believed that “due to the extensive planning and preparation exhibited by both Rose Inessa-Ethington and Blue Inessa-Ethington to isolate MV 1 and take MV 1 to Havana, Cuba, without notifying or requesting permission from MV 1’s mother indicates they are likely not planning to return to the United States with MV 1,” and requested an arrest warrant for both parties.

As the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah notes, a judge in Utah ordered MV 1 returned to LB and granted her sole custody on April 13. Authorities in Cuba located the Inessa-Ethingtons on April 16, and they were later deported back to Richmond, Virginia, on a Department of Justice plane, where they were arraigned.

April 23, 2026 0

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.

March 28, 2026 0

First puberty blockers, now hormones: England’s NHS bans more gender-affirming drugs

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

This week, England’s National Health Service (NHS) threw up yet another roadblock to gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the UK.

On Monday, the NHS announced it was pausing new referrals for feminizing and masculinizing hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds suffering from gender dysphoria, citing a collection of studies commissioned by the health service after publication of the controversial Cass Report in 2024, the Guardian reports.

That study recommended “extreme caution” initiating hormone treatments, including estrogen and testosterone, and a “clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18.”

The new NHS report comes to a similar conclusion.

“Following the Cass review, NHS England commissioned an in-depth review of all available clinical evidence for using estrogen or testosterone either alone or with other medications to treat gender incongruence and dysphoria,” the report states. “This review has established that the available evidence does not support the continued use of masculinizing or feminizing hormones to treat gender incongruence or dysphoria for young people under 18.”

The Cass Review, which contradicted long-established guidance around the efficacy of gender-affirming care for trans youth, has already prompted the health service to halt prescriptions of puberty-suppressing drugs for trans youth, with an indefinite ban for trans minors enacted by the UK government in December 2024.

The UK’s Health Secretary cited an “unacceptable safety risk” for halting new prescriptions of the drugs, though puberty blockers are still prescribed for early onset puberty and other conditions for children not suffering from gender dysphoria.

Puberty blockers, or GnRH analogues, slow down or halt the onset of puberty in young people taking them, and have preceded and been accompanied by the use of estrogen or testosterone for gender transition.

The positive effects of that combination therapy were all but ignored in the new NHS review, say critics of the decision to halt new prescriptions.

The Dutch Protocol, the “gold standard” for transition care, “involves prescribing GnRH analogues (puberty blockers) first to suppress puberty, then adding hormones later,” writes trans journalist Erin Reed in a story questioning the report’s findings.

“When hormones are introduced, the GnRH analogues are sometimes continued alongside them — the blocker keeps suppressing the body’s natural hormones while the prescribed estrogen or testosterone does its work. This overlap period means patients are on both GnRH analogues and hormones at the same time. That is the ‘combination therapy’ the reviews claim to examine.”

But the reviews “inexplicably excluded every study” where GnRH analogues and feminising and masculinising hormones were taken in succession or combination. The review tossed out hundreds of such studies in favour of a “salami slicing” approach that examined the hormones in isolation.

NHS was explicit in its methodology.

“Any reference to GnRH analogues in the context of puberty suppression or used as puberty-suppressing hormones must be excluded,” the report states.

“NHS England’s own data, cited in the reviews themselves, confirms that 98% of its patients followed the very pathway every review was designed to exclude,” Reed writes.

She called the NHS evidence reviews “an extreme example of politically-manufactured science.”

Gender Plus, a leading private trans healthcare and education service in the UK, accused NHS England of ignoring clinical expertise and evidence provided by leaders in the field, including the Endocrine Society, which recommends introducing the hormones for trans youth once “persistence of gender incongruence has been confirmed and the young person has sufficient capacity to consent.”

“NHS England’s interpretation of the evidence is in contrast to every reputable expert body in the field of transgender healthcare,” said a spokesperson for the health group.

NHS said patients currently receiving hormone treatments can continue the therapy, “but this will need to be reviewed individually with their clinical team.”

“Banning new prescriptions of gender-affirming hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds is a profound attack on young people’s bodily autonomy,” said Tammy Hymas, policy lead at British advocacy organization TransActual, “with trans people yet again cruelly singled out by this government.”

March 17, 2026 0

Trump admin directs prisons to wean trans inmates off of hormone therapy in defiance of court order

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Recent guidance from the Trump administration requires federal prisons to begin reducing transgender inmates’ hormone therapy treatments.

Medical experts warn that the move will have dangerous medical and psychological consequences for incarcerated trans people, while legal experts say the guidance violates a federal judge’s preliminary injunction in a case challenging the administration’s anti-trans prison policies.

As Advocate reports, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) issued the new guidance in February. It not only bans prisons from providing hormone therapy to inmates who were not receiving it prior to incarceration, but also orders prisons to develop plans for tapering off treatment for those already receiving it.

Dr. Carl Streed, a Boston-based researcher specializing in transgender health, describes the guidance as “alarming.”

“It’s essentially saying that a form of evidence-based care will no longer be provided to people under the purview of the Bureau of Prisons,” Streed told Advocate. “That means the policy runs counter to best practices and arguably probably the law in terms of providing care to inmates because it’s setting up a different standard for them versus the standard out in the community.”

According to Streed, trans inmates receiving hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria will experience a range of adverse health effects stemming from the drop in hormone levels if their treatment is decreased, including changes in cognition and mood, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and metabolic issues. For those who have already undergone surgeries as part of their gender-affirming care, the risks are even more serious.

“They no longer produce adequate endogenous hormones to a level that would be good for their health if we were to take away their exogenous hormones,” Streed said. “Now we’re going to take away hormone therapy for them — they are put at much greater risk than anybody else.”

As Just Detention International communications director Jesse Lerner-Kinglake said in a statement, the new policy will almost certainly exacerbate the already dangerous conditions for trans inmates. Data from the Department of Justice indicates transgender inmates are 10 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than straight prisoners, and multiple court cases have found that housing transgender women in men’s facilities and denying gender-related healthcare are violations of the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

But on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping anti-trans executive order, which, among other directives, instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure that trans women are housed in men’s detention centers and that “no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

Trans inmates, Lerner-Kinglake said, “already had a bullseye on their back — and the federal government knows it. The rates of sexual abuse facing the transgender community were astronomical before these new policies. It’s hard to imagine this already abysmal situation getting worse. And yet it will.”

The administration has already been blocked from implementing its ban on gender-affirming care in prisons. Last year, three transgender people currently incarcerated in federal custody filed a class action suit against the administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons challenging those policies. In June 2025, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction requiring the BOP to continue providing gender-affirming care to trans inmates as the case proceeds.

It’s unclear whether the administration believes that merely weaning trans inmates off hormone therapy represents a legitimate workaround. But Shayna Medley, senior litigation staff attorney at Advocates for Trans Equality, told Advocate that the new BOP guidance violates that injunction.

“The February 19 guidance from the Bureau of Prisons directing tapering of hormone therapy for transgender people in custody is a direct violation of the injunction in Kingdom v. Trump, which requires the BOP to continue providing hormones to people in custody with a gender dysphoria diagnosis,” Medley said. Advocates for Trans Equality’s position, she said, is that the guidance “is currently enjoined by the existing injunction in the Kingdom v. Trump litigation.”

“Implementation would be in direct violation of the federal court’s order to continue providing hormone therapy to transgender people in BOP custody with a gender dysphoria diagnosis.”

March 12, 2026 0

Republican TX AG sues chest binding company & claims its making “a fortune by hurting kids”

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton (R) is suing a New York-based company for marketing chest binders to minors.

Paxton has accused trans and nonbinary-inclusive youth undergarment brand Lola Olivia of violating his state’s consumer protection laws banning false, misleading, or deceptive advertising. The company, he claimed in a February 20 press release, sells chest binders “to Texas girls as young as nine-years-old to ‘transition’ them” without “informing them that they could be subjected to no less than twenty-eight different medical conditions.”

According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) 2022 Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, trans masculine young people who bind their chests — described as a reversible, nonmedical practice that involves “compression of the breast tissue to create a flatter appearance” — report benefits including “increased comfort, improved safety, and lower rates of misgendering.” Risks such as back/chest pain, shortness of breath, and overheating are common. However, more serious risks, such as those Paxton cites in his lawsuit, like skin infections, respiratory infections, and rib fractures, are rare and more common among adults.

WPATH does recommend that healthcare professionals provide trans and gender diverse adolescents with “accurate and reliable information about the potential benefits and risks of chest binding,” and recommend the use of binders specifically designed for gender diverse people.

Paxton’s complaint includes multiple misrepresentations of medical research. Them notes it cites WPATH’s acknowledgement of certain risks associated with chest binding, but fails to note the infrequency of those risks among young people or the benefits when done properly.

The lawsuit also cites research published in the International Journal of Sexual Health last year, which found a “significant number of negative health implications” reported among trans and nonbinary people who bind. However, researchers also noted that “some studies also found positive effects on dysphoria, life satisfaction, and mental health,” and noted that several studies indicated a lack of knowledge about binding among healthcare providers. Researchers recommended further research “on long-term effects, safer methods, and promoting education” on chest binding.

The complaint also cites the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recent interpretation of chest binders as Class I medical devices under section 201(h) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act because they are “intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or to affect the structure or any function of the body.” Under this interpretation, Paxton alleges Lola Olivia is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by not registering its products with the FDA. But the Dallas Voice notes that the FDA has said class 1 medical devices, which include items like manual stethoscopes and bedpans, “are generally exempt from premarket notification and approval.”

In his press release, Paxton falsely described “transitioning” minors as “child abuse” and accused Lola Olivia of making “a fortune by hurting kids.”

The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order, injunctive relief, and over $1,000,000 in monetary relief, including civil penalties.

March 3, 2026 0

Ken Paxton sues Children’s Health and Dallas doctor for allegedly providing transgender youth care

Adult trans patients left reeling after Massachusetts hospital cancels vaginoplasties without explanation

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Trans women in Massachusetts may be suffering the effects of the Trump administration’s campaign to erase transgender identity from American society, but their hospital won’t confirm or deny it.

Several trans women scheduled for vaginoplasties with a highly regarded doctor specializing in the gender-affirming procedure were informed over the last few weeks that their surgeries had been cancelled and they wouldn’t be able to reschedule them, WGBH reports.

“I’m crushed. I can’t stop crying,” said one patient identified as Avery, who used a pseudonym. “This surgery was life-changing because it finally gives me the body that’s right for me. It has been ripped away with no explanation or follow-up plan.”

Avery’s hospital is UMass Memorial Health in Worcester, Massachusetts, and her surgeon is Dr. Ashley Alford, who introduced an innovative vaginoplasty technique never before used in New England. The surgery involves utilizing abdominal tissue and robotic technology to create a more realistic and functional vagina than other common procedures produce.

Avery had spent months preparing for the surgery, including a switch to a more expensive insurance plan that would cover the procedure.

Then it was cancelled. Avery said she pressed hospital staff for answers and learned that all of Dr. Alford’s appointments had been cancelled. She received no other explanation.

Among the six patients of Dr. Alford’s that were interviewed, all said they’ve received calls in the last two weeks canceling their appointments at UMass; more are identified in a subreddit devoted to the situation, which one describes as “unbelievably confusing.”

Despite the abrupt cancellations, the UMass health system says it’s not curtailing gender-affirming care.

“Although appointments may at times need to be canceled or rescheduled due to the availability of a specific provider, nothing has changed in UMass Memorial Health’s commitment to providing comprehensive, evidence-based health care, including gender affirming care, to all members of our community,” the statement read.

Dr. Alford had no comment on the nixed appointments and procedures.

The second Trump administration has issued a wave of orders curtailing the rights of transgender people, including attempts to end gender-affirming care for minors (early with his executive order addressing so-called “Child Mutilation”) and later, in December, an announcement from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that any hospital providing gender affirming care for minors would lose Medicare and Medicaid funding.

UMass’s abrupt cancellations of surgeries for trans adults conjure a nightmare scenario for older patients reliant on gender-affirming care.

Chrissi Bates, an advocate for transgender healthcare and Alford’s first patient to undergo the advanced vaginoplasty procedure, sees a hidden hand behind Alford’s sudden unavailability.

“We all love Dr. Alford. We all doubt that it’s her that wants to leave,” said Bates, who planned on seeing Alford for post-op appointments. “It’s really disheartening to hear that UMass is just caving to this unjust kind of healthcare agenda that’s being pushed by the Trump administration.”

Most of all, the UMass patients in Worcester want answers.

“If it is Dr. Alford being pushed out due to concerns from the Trump administration, who’s to say that’s not going to happen in Boston?” said Kara Earp, a North Carolina transplant who moved to Massachusetts just for the gender-affirming care. Her appointment with Alford was cancelled, as well.

“I probably won’t actually be happy until I wake up from surgery and it’s all over with,” she said.

February 17, 2026 0