PITTSBURGH — Transgender advocates are planning a rally Sunday outside of UPMC Headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh in response to UPMC’s decision to end its gender-affirming care for those under the age of 19.
A spokesperson for UPMC says this decision is in response to the Trump Administration’s stance on youth gender-affirming care.
“As we continue to monitor executive branch memos, directives and other guidance from the federal government, these actions have made it abundantly clear that our clinicians can no longer provide certain types of gender-affirming care without risk of criminal prosecution,” the spokesperson says.
President Trump signed the ‘Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation’ act Jan. 28.
The act goes on to say, “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
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In Pittsburgh, transgender rights advocacy group TransYOUniting is organizing a rally against UPMC’s decision to end its gender-affirming care and says this decision will put lives at risk.
“This is unacceptable. These are children, and this should not be happening. And they need care,” said TransYOUniting founder Dena Stanley. “They are just folks needing health care, and you are denying individuals’ health care because of their identity.”
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Stanley says this moment is a result of politicizing gender-affirming care.
“They should not be subject to this cruel, cruel denial of health care because of the political climate that we are living in,” Stanley said.
Stanley says the rally will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at UPMC’s downtown headquarters.
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