(LifeSiteNews) — Gender-confused minors will at least temporarily be protected from permanently damaging drugs thanks to two Wisconsin hospitals’ decisions to pause the procedures. The decision drew praise from two groups that advocate for protecting kids from the procedures.
Children’s Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin Health made the decisions due to President Trump’s directives to “block all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide [so-called] gender-affirming care to minors,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
“In a statement, Children’s Wisconsin cited ‘escalating legal and federal regulatory risk’ facing providers across the nation as the reason it is ‘currently unable to provide gender affirming pharmacologic care,’” Wisconsin Public Radio reported. University of Wisconsin Health made a similar announcement.
“We recognize the uncertainty faced by our impacted patients and families seeking this [so-called] gender affirming care and will continue to support their health and well-being,” the publicly-funded hospital system stated.
An LGBT activist group relied on the debunked claim that kids will kill themselves if they cannot take permanently damaging drugs meant to make them look like the opposite sex.
“For trans people of all ages, being able to express themselves in the gender that they feel that they are is important for their mental and physical health,” Steve Sarkey with OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center in Madison told Wisconsin Public Radio. “By not allowing trans people to do that, to have the support, it just means that they are not able to be wholly who they are.”
“It will definitely have a negative impact on the rates of suicide and the mental health of trans community,” Starkey said. “It affects trans adults as well, because it’s like an attack on all trans people.”
However, experts disagree with Starkey’s conclusion.
“There is no evidence supporting claims that pediatric medical transition reduces the incidence of youth suicide,” Dr. Kurt Miceli told LifeSiteNews via a media statement.
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The Do No Harm medical director called it “morally and professionally wrong for these activists to emotionally blackmail minors and parents of minors suffering from gender-confusion.”
“Minors suffering from mental health issues should be treated with the utmost care, not pushed into harmful procedures,” Miceli told LifeSiteNews.
Brian Camenker, president of MassResistance, provided similar comments.
“First, the idea that transgender is ‘wholly who they are’ is a cruel lie that panders to their mental health problems,” Camenker told LifeSiteNews via email. He is a longtime activist against the LGBT agenda.
“The best thing one can do for them is tell them the truth: No, it’s not who they are,” Camenker said.
“Second, the LGBT movement’s assertion that not allowing people to ‘transition’ leads them to suicide is also completely false,” he said. “All of the legitimate science leads to the opposite conclusion: that allowing them to transition leads to suicide.”
In fact, Camenker points out mental health issues can increase after someone begins presenting as the opposite sex.
“I’ve never seen any record of a person committing suicide (or attempting suicide) because he couldn’t go through so-called medical transition,” Camenker told LifeSiteNews. “But I’ve seen many cases of people being horribly miserable once they did.”
Other hospitals have announced similar pauses on their transgender surgeries due to federal directives.
Mental health narrative falls apart upon closer examination
Scientific evidence, and the personal testimony of formerly gender-confused individuals, further challenges the LGBT narrative that gender-confused children, or adults for that matter, need the procedures for their own well-being.
So-called medical professionals committed a double mastectomy on Chloe Cole when she 15-years-old because of her claimed gender-confusion. Cole now no longer presents herself as a boy and warns about the ongoing harms she experiences due to the removal of her breasts.
“I really didn’t understand all of the ramifications of any of the medical decisions that I was making,” Cole said in 2022. “I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child, and I might be at increased risk for certain cancers, namely cervical cancer. And because I do not have my breasts, … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have,” she previously said.
A 2025 study from Oxford also concluded transgender surgery increases depression and suicidal ideation rates – in direct contradiction of the claims of activists.
“Males who underwent transgender surgery had a depression rate of 25.4 percent, compared to 11.5 percent in those who did not have surgery,” LifeSiteNews reported. “Likewise, females who underwent surgery had a depression rate of 22.9 percent, compared to 14.6 percent in those who did not.”
Another study, based on a comprehensive review of medical records, found those who had transgender surgeries were more likely to be treated for suicide attempts than those who had not.
