California must protect gender care for young people

By Pamuela Halliwell, especially for CalMatters

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In California, many of us want to believe that transgender and non-binary people will always have access to fair and affirming health care like anyone else.

What we’re seeing across the state, however, tells a different story. Even in the nation’s most LGBTQ-affirming states, access to needed medical care is tenuous, and families are paying the price.

In January, Rady Children’s Hospital of San Diego and Children’s Hospital of Orange County announced they would end gender-affirming care for patients under the age of 18, citing threats by the Trump administration to cut off federal funding to any hospital serving transgender minors.

Families quickly felt the effects. A San Diego teenager had her gender confirmation surgery canceled just weeks before her due date; others saw long-planned meetings suddenly disappear.

Now California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the two hospitals to shut down their gender confirmation services, and a San Diego judge ordered them to temporarily continue providing services until April 27, when a court hearing is scheduled. Youth and families remain uncertain whether basic care will be available to them in the future.

At the San Diego LGBT Community Center, I see the impact of these disruptions in real time, in the fear families carry, the uncertainty young people are forced to sit with, and the harm that falls hardest on trans/nonbinary youth, people of color, and our black and brown communities. If gender-affirming care is withheld, the consequences will be immediate and the harm life-threatening.

Transgender and non-binary youth face significant challenges increased risk of depressionanxiety and suicide attempts, the Trevor Project national study shows.

In the 2024 report, almost half of transgender and non-binary young people said they had seriously considered suicide in the previous year. Access to gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers, hormones, and supportive mental health services — has been shown by peer-reviewed studies to dramatically reduce these risks.

Taking away access to care after families and providers have already made thoughtful, informed medical decisions is not just destructive; this is cruel. This sends a devastating message to young people that their health, safety and future is up for debate. Healthcare organizations are subservient to the political agenda for evidence-based medical care that saves lives.

The federal government’s threats created a chilling effect across the country. As of 2025, more than 40 gender-affirming clinics have limited or paused care for youth because losing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements would threaten their ability to work. Even institutions in supportive states like California make decisions driven by political fear.

At the LGBT Community Center, we do our best to respond. Our Project TRANS, Youth Services, and Behavioral Health Services teams offer crisis support, mental health services, and resource connections for families who suddenly have nowhere else to turn.

But community organizations cannot replace hospitals. We cannot perform an operation. We cannot prescribe hormones to minors. At a time when institutions are in retreat, our community must come out louder, stronger and more united than ever.

State Assemblyman Chris Ward was introduced in February Assembly Bill 1775 to support troops exempt from the Trump administration’s anti-transgender military policies. We need more of these types of actions that draw attention to the need to support our transgender community.

Our state needs funding structures that can’t be dismantled by changing federal policy, and a statewide network of providers that are gender-affirming — so care doesn’t depend on the decisions of a few big hospitals.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.