A hospital chain in Pennsylvania has chosen to comply with Trump’s stance on gender-affirming care, despite a court injunction blocking his executive order. Now hundreds of LGBTQ+ advocates have shown up in protest to demand the hospital reinstate life-saving care for trans youth.
Last week, nearly 200 protestors camped out in the rain on the front steps of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Organized by local queer nonprofit Trans YOUniting, protestors came together to call out the hospital for preemptively caving to the Trump administration and denying gender affirming care for new and some existing patients under 19 years old.
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In advance of the protests, community members and local politicians signed an open letter laying out their demands to the UPMC. “We are calling on UPMC to immediately restore access to protect gender affirming healthcare for trans youth and young adults currently being turned away,” the letter reads.
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“Gender-affirming care for youth is medically necessary, life-saving healthcare, supported by every major medical organization in the United States based on decades of scientific, evidence-based, peer-reviewed research. Evidence shows that without access to these interventions, youth — especially to those just starting puberty — will be harmed. This includes suffering physical changes that are not easily reversible, lifelong trauma in some cases, and when they have no hope of access to care — death.”
Although a court has blocked Trump’s gender-affirming care ban for now, organizers are aware that the injunction could be removed in the future. In that event, they call on UPMC to “enthusiastically support and fund alternative providers to ensure trans youth receive the medically necessary healthcare they need to survive.” The letter also demands the establishment of an advisory committee that includes trans youth in the conversation over their healthcare.
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey was the first signatory on the letter, and he called on other elected officials to stand behind the trans community. “We have to make a statement about it because if we don’t say nothing, silence gives them the ability to think that they can do it,” he said, according to The Advocate.
In the event that UPMC doesn’t change course, Gainey said local officials would have to work with the queer community to find the next path forward. “I would hope that other federally qualified hospitals and others would step in,” he said. “But you know, we would have to work with the LGBTQ community to find out exactly how we can come together and what that strategy looks like in order to really be able to move things forward. That’s a conversation that we would have to have.
“But as mayor, I’m going to use every tool at my disposal to pressure them and to assure the folks that at the end of the day, we want them to do what’s right.”
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