Protestors push for Rady Children’s Hospital to rescind decision to end gender-affirming care
As the hospital plans the closure of its Center for Gender Affirming Care, San Diegans have concerns over access to mental and physical health care for LGBTQ+ youth across the county and beyond.
Written by Sam Barney-Gibbs and Lauren J. Mapp, Edited by Maya Srikrishnan and Kate Morrissey
More than 600 San Diegans gathered outside Rady Children’s Hospital Saturday to show support for transgender and gender-expansive youth during a protest against the hospital’s plans to close its Center for Gender-Affirming Care after nearly 14 years.
Protestors waved diverse pride flags, gripped homemade posters — many reading “gender-affirming care saves lives” — and donned colorful clothing, personalized white lab coats and messages of support for the gender-expansive community
The hospital reported that as of Feb. 6, it will cancel new and pending appointments for the center’s patients under 19. TransFamily Support Services and the Alliance for TransYouth Rights called on the community to peacefully protest the closure.
Closure of the center — which serves nearly 1,000 patients — will leave gender-expansive children and young adults across Southern California and neighboring states without a long-standing resource for physical and mental health care.
The discontinued services include access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone therapy and other prescriptions and procedures, said Kathie Moehlig, TransFamily Support Services executive director.
“The environment around gender-affirming care has changed dramatically, with escalating federal actions,” said Rady’ Children’s Hospital spokesperson Ben Metcalf in an emailed statement explaining the decision to no longer provide gender-affirming medical interventions, prescriptions and procedures.
In December, the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed regulatory actions to bar hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs if they provide gender-affirming care to trans youth. The proposed changes would also prohibit Medicaid funding from covering care for trans youth under 19.
Metcalf said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General received a referral to investigate the hospital. The change was necessary to continue “caring for all children and families in our communities,” he said, since Rady receives Medicaid and Medicare funding.
Moehlig said though the protest organizers focus primarily on advocacy, policy and personal resource services, TransFamily Support Services felt the need to do something new and show families that they are going to fight back against the closure.
“We serve hundreds of families in San Diego County that this is affecting,” Moehlig said. “So, we have to do this. We have to show Rady that they're not going to get away with doing this. It is an early capitulation to the federal government.”
The decision to end gender-affirming care at Rady Children’s Hospital follows widescale attacks against transgender, nonbinary and other gender-expansive community members from the federal government under the second Trump administration.
Since last January, President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders aimed at limiting rights and access to care for transgender people. Those include hindering people from changing their sex on government-issued documents from what they were assigned at birth, banning transgender people from serving in the military and limiting gender-affirming care for children.
But the policy changes have not yet been made official. They are currently under the public comments period and will likely be challenged by LGBTQ+ legal rights organizations if enacted.
Moehlig encourages people to comment on the policies in the designated CMS open comment portal open until Feb. 17. The comments become public evidence when these policies go into litigation.
“It's important that we get as many people as possible, whether you're a family with a trans person, or just someone who understands that this is scientific- and evidence-based care that should continue,” Moehlig said.
“The Trump administration aims to force providers into an impossible choice: stop providing health care to trans youth in order to protect federal funding for every other patient,” said the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, in a December press release responding to the policy proposals.
As the children’s hospital serves many families under Medi-Cal, Moehlig said Rady wouldn’t “survive more than a day or two” without that funding. More than 32% of Rady’s discharges used Medi-Cal, according to a 2024 state report on Rady’s merger with the Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
But Moehlig stressed that the policies have only been announced, not finalized. She suspects vehement court battles, meaning it could be years before legal changes take place.
“We understand they're in a hard place. We understand that the true villain in this story is the federal administration,” she said. “But the fact that Rady Children's Hospital went ahead and capitulated early before they had to, that's just not acceptable.”
Metcalf did not provide any resources that Rady Children’s Hospital is sharing with affected patients and their families, but said they were communicating with them to go over next steps.
“We continue to provide supportive care including counseling, mental health resources, and care coordination,” he said in the emailed statement. “We will also help connect families to ongoing resources. We respect the dignity of all patients, including LGBTQ+ patients and transgender youth, and remain committed to providing compassionate, respectful care. ”
He said the hospital would not be providing any further comment.
Without the center at Rady Children’s Hospital, there is a scarcity of gender-affirming care for patients in Southern California.
Last summer, Kaiser Permanente, which serves more than 12 million members in eight states, announced it would pause gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19 starting in August, CalMatters reported. San Diego spokesperson Jennifer Dailard told Daylight in an email that Kaiser still offers other treatments, including “implantable hormone treatments as an in-office procedure.”
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles also closed its transgender youth clinic and Stanford Medicine stopped performing gender-affirming surgeries on youth under 19. Rady Children’s Health — formerly Children’s Hospital of Orange County — will also stop offering gender-affirming care starting Feb. 6.
A spokesperson for UC San Diego Health said in an email the hospital does not provide gender-affirming care to minors. Scripps Health does not provide any hospital-based clinics or programs, a spokesperson said via email. Sharp HealthCare did not respond to a request for comment to confirm whether it offered gender-affirming care for minors.
Stephanie Constantino, a local family physician with trans and LGBTQ+ friends and patients, who attended the protest said she feels it’s her responsibility to speak up when that access is at risk.
“Gender-affirming care is life saving,” she said. “It is just a huge heartbreak to me that [Rady Children’s Hospital] would give up on this.”
Constantino hopes to learn how to provide gender-affirming care.
“A lot of my patients are afraid of losing their care, [but] they’re extremely resilient,” she said. “They are going to find a way to get that care no matter what, but we should be providing it to them in a legal and a safe manner.”
People will likely have to travel further and sit on long wait lists, Moehlig said.
“The attacks are coming from the federal government, not from your community, not from the institutions that are serving you,” Moehlig said. “There is a large community of people who are working diligently to help fight for your rights.”
One of those people is Lachlan Dougher, a protester who recently began their gender transition.
It took them more than two years to be referred to an endocrinologist, and they don't want gender barriers in health care to continue. Dougher, who is a trans health care worker, said instead of barriers being broken down to make access easier, they're getting built up more.
“I really want to prioritize that our voices are heard,” Dougher said. “To think that minors might not be able to get that care is just devastating to me, because I didn't know I could be as happy as I am right now. And I don't want to see any kind of reality where that happiness could be denied to anybody.”
