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In the flurry of executive orders issued by President Trump, there was one targeting hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for young people. In response, many of the hospitals have stopped or pulled back on certain treatments. That includes Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. Kristen Schorsch, at member station WBEZ, has been tracking the ripple effects on patients and their families.
KRISTEN SCHORSCH, BYLINE: He's a teenager in the Chicago suburbs. He loves theater and is working on his Eagle Scout project, and he's been receiving treatment for the past four years.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Getting this treatment isn't fixing something that's wrong with me. It's just helping me grow more into who I want to be and who I can feel most comfortable existing as.
SCHORSCH: NPR is not identifying the 17-year-old or his mom because they fear he will be targeted for being transgender. He injects testosterone once a week. He's already frozen his eggs, in case he wants to have his own biological kids one day. The next step was scheduling top surgery at Lurie Children's Hospital, but then his mom got a voicemail from the hospital.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: And I was, like, oh, no. I could feel in the pit of my stomach that I, like, knew what it was.
SCHORSCH: The surgery was off. Lurie is near downtown Chicago. It is one of the oldest gender-care programs in the country. Trump's executive order says that care amounts to chemical and surgical mutilation. It also indicated that if hospitals don't comply, they could lose crucial federal funding, and more than half of Lurie's revenue comes from Medicaid. The hospital's decision left the 17-year-old hurt and confused. He says he had asked his doctors before what they would do if this change came.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All of their responses were, we will fight as hard as we can legally. We will try to push it back as much as we can. And then they go ahead and cancel it themselves. Like, they weren't forced to do that.
SCHORSCH: Two federal judges have already ruled that the executive order is not enforceable, but Lurie has not resumed surgeries. In Illinois, there's also a state law that says it's illegal to discriminate against patients because of their gender identity. So is Lurie violating that state law? Neither the state's attorney general nor Governor JB Pritzker would say. Pritzker, who is a Democrat, did tell NPR he thinks hospitals are being blackmailed into limiting care.
JB PRITZKER: Believe me, I know the people at Lurie Children's Hospital. I know the people who run most of these hospitals, and I can tell you that they want to do the right thing for their patients.
SCHORSCH: After Lurie's decision, hundreds protested outside.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS #1: (Chanting) If trans kids are under attack, what do we do?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS #2: (Chanting) Stand up. Fight back.
SCHORSCH: Twenty-seven states limit or ban gender-affirming care for minors. That includes South Carolina, where Dr. Elizabeth Mack works. She has treated younger trans patients who ended up in the ICU when they couldn't get care.
ELIZABETH MACK: And they come in either attempting or dying by suicide. It's just one of those things that leaves a mark that I can't unsee.
SCHORSCH: Lurie has only paused surgeries, not therapy or other treatments, but some parents in Chicago worry about what comes next. Michelle Vallet's son Ben Garcia takes testosterone shots every week and gets checkups at Lurie.
MICHELLE VALLET: There's not a family probably at Lurie that is confident that Lurie isn't going to fold on all of the care. I know you don't have my son's back.
SCHORSCH: Dr. Robert Garofalo started the gender-care program at Lurie Children's. In a statement, he said, quote, "this decision was painstakingly difficult, and it was made amid unprecedented circumstances and external pressures," unquote. He says Lurie stopped surgeries so that they can keep offering the other treatments, like hormones and puberty blockers. Surgery is just one option for minors, and it's rare.
Ben Garcia started going to Lurie when he was 10 or 11. Therapists evaluated his mental health over multiple appointments before starting each new treatment. When Garcia was 16, he had a double mastectomy. Without that top surgery, he says...
BEN GARCIA: I would have been more withdrawn, less confident in, like, myself. This care has allowed me to be a lot more comfortable in who I am and the way that I present myself to the world.
SCHORSCH: Now Garcia's 18 and headed to college in the fall. Still, his mom and other families feel betrayed by Lurie.
VALLET: I can have compassion and understanding that it's economic, too, right? But at a certain point, in the environment we're in, you have to say, no, I'm not doing this.
SCHORSCH: After Lurie canceled their surgeries, many patients were referred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. But after booking appointments there, Northwestern canceled those, too.
For NPR News, I'm Kristen Schorsch in Chicago.
RASCOE: This story comes from NPR's partnership with WBEZ and KFF Health News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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