KAYLA BELFONT
Staff Reporter
The Trump administration subpoenaed the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in June and Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington in July. The July subpoena, which was served to over 20 hospitals nationwide and came to light in a court filing in August, demanded patients’ medical records — including dates of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses — as well as years’ worth of physician communications.
Nemours Children’s Health is facing continuous scrutiny from the Trump administration, and officially stopped accepting new patients into its gender-affirming care clinic. A federal judge in Philadelphia sided with CHOP in Nov., quashing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) demands and finding that the government lacked the authority to conduct what the court called a sweeping exploration of the hospital’s files.
The Trump administration appealed the ruling and has since escalated pressure on both hospitals, referring them to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for investigation.
At the center of the legal battle is the hospitals’ provision of gender-affirming care to minors.
The term “gender-affirming care” encompasses more procedures and medical treatment than many typically assume. HHS states that gender-affirming care is anything that makes you feel more like your gender — despite age, ethnicity, nationality or sex. However, this definition of gender-affirming care is no longer supported by the Trump administration.
Professor Eric Layland in the university’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences explains the breadth of gender-affirming care.
“Gender-affirming care is a broad area of both medical, mental and other care that allows someone to feel like their sense of their gender and self is affirmed through those medical health and social services that are offered to them,” Layland said. “Gender-affirming care can also include things like getting a haircut that allows you to express your gender in the way you want to.”
Concern over the age of those seeking gender-affirming care has become a primary political issue, with 767 bills proposed nationally in 2026 to limit access to such care. According to a student at the university, who wishes to remain anonymous for their protection, age should not be a limitation when it comes to access to care.
“Hormone blockers, which is a form of gender-affirming care, comes at 12 to 13 years of age,” the student said.
Hormone blockers can be used to delay puberty changes by stopping the production of sex hormones. Finn Thornton, the assistant director of communications for the Lavender Programming Board (LPB), a registered student organization (RSO) for LGTBTQ+ students on campus, mentions that hormone blockers are much safer than many people assume them to be.
“Hormone blockers for young trans people are actual life-saving medical care, and there is so much stigma around them right now that just is untrue,” Thornton, who is a transgender senior at the university, said. “They’re not nearly as unsafe as people seem to think they are, and they’re not nearly as permanent as people think they are.”
Thornton had similar beliefs when asked what age is too soon for treatment.
“Having an age cutoff for gender-affirming care is a ridiculous concept to me,” Thornton said. “It’s purely a way to try to control people, and it doesn’t have anything to do with trying to keep people safe.”
Thorton explained that enforcing federal policies to get rid of gender-affirming care will not stop people from seeking support. Instead, it would likely make such care less accessible and potentially less safe.
“That leads to increased suicide rates for trans people, especially young trans people,” Thornton said. “It leads to people trying to, kind of, DIY their own gender-affirming care, which can be extremely dangerous.”
Layland explained that because of these subpoenas and recent political decisions, many patients around the nation have been unable to receive care.
“For patients who are currently in treatment or were on the way to receiving treatment, many of them have had their treatment withdrawn or stopped,” Layland said. “Across the country, health centers have cut programming that is focused on gender-affirming care in those services.”
The student who wished to remain anonymous argued that correlations between suicide rates are crucial to take note of.
“Look at the studies, look at the statistics,” the student said. “Gender-affirming care helps people way more than it hurts them.”
Thornton also highlighted the impact of these policies and legal battles for kids.
“I think kids are always super aware of what’s going on, more than what most people think,” Thornton said. “They’re going to know that it’s less safe for them to speak about their gender identities.”
In light of political disagreement over the issue, transgender people are looking for ways to move forward.
“I think it’s just about being as informed and educated as you can, and knowing there are ways to get around it,” the anonymous student said. “There are resources, there is access, but it’s true that it is being limited, it is being censored and there is a lot of fear around it.”
