In February, two major medical organizations shocked trans advocates by announcing new recommendations for gender-affirming care.

The American Medical Association (AMA) followed the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) to walk back full-fledged support for whatever gender-affirming treatments a doctor and a minor’s family determine the minor needs.

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The shifts left many wondering whether the organizations were influenced by the current administration, and, according to a recent New York Times report, both organizations appear to have been.

On Monday, the Times said that sometime during the winter, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (who has been going after trans rights since his confirmation), held a meeting for the leaders of the nation’s major medical organizations to discuss why they all endorsed medical interventions for trans teenagers.

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Sources told the Times that Dr. Oz’s tone was measured, rather than hostile, but that it was clear he hoped to sway the organizations away from supporting gender-affirming care for young trans people.

Dr. Oz’s position on trans health care for young people is no secret. In December, he wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post decrying gender-affirming care as “risky experiments that cause irreversible harm” and claiming it treats children like “lab mice” (even though the medications have been safely administered to cisgender children to treat other conditions, like precocious puberty and rare cancers).

At the meeting of the medical minds, ASPS reportedly shocked everyone by announcing it was indeed changing its stance on gender-affirming care. The organization’s president, C. Bob Basu, has made several donations to the president and other anti-trans Republican politicians.

But the group’s former president, Dr. Scot Glasberg, insisted that work to change the guidelines began in 2024 before Basu became president and that Basu’s political affiliations had nothing to do with it. Glasberg said he supported updating the recommendations as president because “the evidence here doesn’t seem to be very good, and there isn’t a lot of it.”

The Times – which has a pattern of publishing anti-trans articles – echoed this sentiment, claiming that research on whether gender-affirming care helps young patients in the long term, particularly their mental health, is “inconclusive” and that the question still “hangs over the entire field.”

But studies overwhelmingly show that gender-affirming care is both safe and effective for youth experiencing gender dysphoria. One recent study out of Utah found overwhelming evidence to support gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.

Another study from 2024 out of Australia found that only 1% of trans teens detransition. A 2023 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that hormone therapy improves the mental health of trans youth, and a 2022 study from the Netherlands found that an overwhelming majority of trans youth continue gender-affirming care as adults.

In fact, activists sounded the alarm on an “epidemic” of trans youth taking their own lives in the U.K. after the country restricted access to gender-affirming care.

The ASPS announced the change in its stance publicly on February 3, releasing a statement advising against conducting “gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery” on people under the age of 19. The ASPS based its statement on two recent reports from the U.K. and the U.S. that were widely criticized by transgender healthcare advocates as being biased.

The AMA soon followed. “In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood,” AMA said.

Surgical interventions, however, are already almost never performed on minors. Trans minors virtually never receive bottom surgery, though some teenagers ultimately do get top surgery or facial procedures.

The AMA still endorses other gender-affirming care for youth, such as puberty blockers and other hormone therapy. So while its new recommendations don’t change much in practice, they no doubt contribute to the growing stigma around gender-affirming care and further embolden the anti-trans movement, giving the right wing a “win” in its crusade against trans existence.

In its own statement, the ASPS admitted that it didn’t reach its conclusions through “a formal guideline development process,” independent systematic assessment of existing medical evidence, consultation with consensus panels of medical experts, or strength-of-recommendation determinations weighing the benefits of gender-affirming care against its potential risks.

Rather, the organization admitted that it based its findings wholly on the U.K.’s infamous 2024 Cass Report (which excluded numerous studies demonstrating the benefits of gender-affirming care) and the U.S. Department of Health’s 2025 review (which was anonymously generated in 90 days, underwent no peer-review process, and resulted from a U.S. executive order seeking to ban all gender-affirming care for trans youth).

Both the U.K. and U.S. documents suggested conversion therapy for trans youth, disregarded all research and guidance produced or endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and contradicted the best practices in gender-affirming care for trans youth recommended by all other major U.S. medical associations.

Despite the limitations of the ASPS’s statement, the organization said it opposes the criminalization of gender-affirming care. It also said that its policy statement “does not seek to deny or minimize the reality of any patient’s distress, and it does not question the authenticity of any patient’s experience.”

Trans activist Alejandra Caraballo slammed ASPS at the time week for hypocrisy over the fact that it continues to do thousands of breast reductions per year on cis girls and boys. “These can carry substantial risks of loss of function, sensitivity, and standard surgical risks,” she wrote. “Yet, ASPS isn’t advising against those.”

If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386.

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