RFK Jr. Drops the Hammer on 'Gender-Affirming Care' — HHS Declares END to Dangerous Procedures on Minors

In a sweeping announcement, Kennedy calls out decades of medical malpractice, bans federal funding, and places science above ideology to protect America’s children.

It was a watershed moment in American healthcare policy, one that sent shockwaves through the medical establishment and signaled the end of an era.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stepped to the podium in the at HHS headquarters, and from the first words, it was clear this was more than a standard announcement—it was a reckoning.

The decades-long narrative surrounding “gender-affirming care” for minors was being challenged head-on, and the Department of Health and Human Services was prepared to act decisively.

The HHS unveiled a sweeping package of proposed regulatory actions on Thursday, all aimed at ending “sex-rejecting procedures” for minors—a move directly aligned with President Trump’s January executive order instructing the department to protect children from what he described as “chemical and surgical mutilation.”

After years of ideological enforcement disguised as medicine, the charade was finally on notice.

Kennedy wasted no time confronting the medical community that had allowed this to happen.

His voice carried both moral outrage and measured authority.

“Doctors across the country now provide needless and irreversible sex rejecting procedures that violate their sacred Hippocratic Oath, endangering the very lives they’re sworn to safeguard.”

“The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex rejecting procedures could be good for children who suffer from gender dysphoria.”

“They betrayed the estimated 300,000 American youth ages 13 to 17, conditioned to believe that sex can be changed. They betrayed their Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. So-called gender affirming care has done psychological and physical damage to vulnerable young people.”

“This is not medicine, it is malpractice.”

With each statement, Kennedy framed the issue not as a political debate but as a profound moral failure.

The room was silent, absorbed in the gravity of his words, until he made the stakes unmistakably clear.

“We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”

“Peer-reviewed report published by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health last month confirms that sex rejecting procedures impose medical dangers and lasting harm on children who receive these interventions.”

“Today we’re taking six decisive actions guided by gold standard science and the week one executive order from President Trump to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation.”

“This morning I signed a declaration: sex rejecting procedures are neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria.”

The audience erupted into applause.

After setting the moral framework, Kennedy moved to the practical implications of the new rules, outlining precisely how they would reshape healthcare policy and limit the previous assumptions of gender-affirming care in pediatric medicine.

“These procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care.”

“Medical professionals or entities providing sex rejecting procedures to children are out of compliance with these standards of healthcare.”

“This declaration is a clear directive to providers to follow the science and the overwhelming body of evidence that these procedures hurt, not help, children.”

He then detailed the concrete regulatory steps the department was taking.

“Additionally CMS is proposing two new rules. The first rule will bar hospitals that participate in Medicare and Medicaid, which is almost every hospital, from performing these dangerous and harmful procedures.”

“The second rule prohibits the federal Medicaid dollars from funding the sex-rejecting procedures on minors.”

“The FDA is issuing warning letters to 12 manufacturers of breast binders, which are medical devices used for purposes such as assistance in recovery from cancer related mastectomies. The FDA is telling these companies that the illegal marketing of breast binders to children for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria commits significant regulatory violations and requires swift corrective action.”

“If the manufacturers don’t comply, they could face enforcement actions including product seizures.”

Kennedy also addressed the Biden-era policies that had expanded the legal designation of gender dysphoria as a disability, highlighting the consequences of that shift.

“Furthermore HHS is also moving to reverse the Biden administration’s attempt to include gender dysphoria within the definition of disability.”

“My uncle Ted Kennedy was the primary author of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1978 amendments that strengthened the rehabilitation act.”

“The Biden-era amendments that designated gender dysphoria as a disability served the commercial interests of a predatory, multi-billion dollar industry that betrayed the original intention of those laws and engendered widespread public resentments against those laws among the American people, and discredited the statutes in the public mind.”

“These are statutes that were designed to protect the most vulnerable Americans and the misuse of these statutes for these purposes injures the statutes themselves and injures other people who are entitled to that protection and who Americans want to see protected.”

“Our proposed rule will reassure recipients of HHS funding that policies preventing or limiting sex rejecting procedures do not violate disability non-discrimination requirements.”

Finally, Kennedy addressed the public health guidance that will accompany these changes, reinforcing that the new policies are grounded in evidence, not ideology.

“Finally, our assistant secretary of health—signed a public health message to inform healthcare providers, families and policymakers that current evidence does not support claims that puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries are safe and effect treatments for pediatric gender dysphoria.”

By the end of the announcement, the message was unmistakable: the federal government was stepping in to protect children from what Kennedy repeatedly called a “medical malpractice crisis.”

His closing words framed the issue as more than policy—they were a call to moral responsibility.

“There is divine worth in every person. It shines most brightly in our children.”

“That worth commands us to protect them. And as long as I serve as HHS Secretary, this agency will do so.”

[Applause]

The HHS package marks a turning point. For the first time in years, federal policy is moving to restrict harmful interventions on minors, placing science and child welfare above ideology and industry pressure.

Kennedy’s address was as much a moral argument as a policy statement—a declaration that the medical establishment will no longer have unchecked authority over America’s most vulnerable.

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