Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces HHS crackdown on 'sex-rejecting' surgeries for minors: 'Malpractice'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, December 19, 2025

WASHINGTON — Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is taking steps to push back against what he described as "sex-rejecting" transgender procedures for minors.

"So-called 'gender-affirming care' has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people," Kennedy said during a roughly hour-long press conference that also featured remarks from HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and Chloe Cole, a prominent detransitioner who has testified about her story before on Capitol Hill.

"This is not medicine; it is malpractice," Kennedy added.

Today, @SecKennedy signed a declaration stating that sex-rejecting treatments on children do not meet professionally recognized standards of health care. pic.twitter.com/5gaLhzQBCY

— HHS (@HHSGov) December 18, 2025

Kennedy said the proposed HHS rules, which are subject to a 60-day comment period, would bar hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid from performing transgender procedures on children, citing risks of irreversible harm such as infertility, impaired sexual function, bone density loss and altered brain development.

"Sex-rejecting procedures are neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria," he said.

'Tip of the spear'

The conference, which came a day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to ban transgender procedures for minors and the same day another bill passed to ban Medicaid reimbursement for such interventions, took place across the street from the U.S. Capitol in the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, the headquarters of HHS that was named for former President Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, who serves as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, condemned transgender ideology as a "dishonest narrative" that "treats children like lab mice." During his remarks, he appealed to a quote from Humphrey that adorns the entrance of the HHS building.

"The moral test of government is how that government treats those in the dawn of life, the children; those in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped," reads the quote from Humphrey, which Oz suggested continues to govern HHS under its present leadership.

"You know what you get when you mix politics and medicine?" he asked. "Politics; there's no medicine left. We witness that with bizarre statements, predatory actions and many other activities that I think have forced children to the tip of the spear, where they have to [bear the brunt] of this toxic combination."

Oz, who said children confused about their sexuality are especially vulnerable to "fast-track" pharmacological and surgical interventions, went on to blame medical professionals and the mainstream media for pushing a destructive narrative.

"We've been told that permanently altering bodies of children — and the children are told this, as well — will bring them lasting peace," he said. "But few have achieved the inner peace promised by the charlatans and the talking heads — the media, personalities, the social media posts — all these have created a dishonest narrative."

He likened such invasive procedures to "a Band-Aid on a much deeper pathology, a much deeper problem; the underlying issue of gender dysphoria."

"It denies patients the opportunity to be seen for who they really are," he added.

He urged doctors to use "the least invasive possible" approaches to treating gender dysphoria, going on to add that the HHS' proposed regulations will save the government hundreds of millions over the next decade by preventing a lucrative "grotesque laundry list" of procedures to remove healthy reproductive organs and fashion fake ones.

"It's shameful that clinicians have profiteered off this," he said. "I do not understand how this could possibly have been tolerated by the leadership of these institutions, but it will no longer be funded."

Oz questioned if such professionals, who he said claim to be "so die-hard desirous at helping children," will continue to be interested in performing such procedures if they don't get paid.

"I think we know the answer," he said, later adding: "American taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for ideological experiments on our nation's youth."

'Tears that I don't show'

Chloe Cole, an activist who detransitioned after undergoing surgical procedures pushed on her when she was struggling with gender dysphoria as a minor, offered an emotional testimony during the press conference regarding what the medical industry did to her.

Cole, whose voice remains irreparably deepened from the hormones she took at the behest of doctors when she was 13 years old, said she was honored to be speaking "on behalf of American children whose innocence and health are being compromised, whose lives are being ripped apart by ideologically driven medical experimentation."

"I represent a community of people who have been harmed by these procedures, and yet are largely ignored by the same doctors, the same clinics and medical systems that harmed them," she said.

Cole, who shared that she removed her breasts when she was 15 years old, said she will never be able to breastfeed a child and that "gender-affirming care" is not care at all, but rather "unscientific medical abuse that violates every tenet of medical ethics."

"This ideology is festering at an unimaginable scale within our hospital systems, our culture, our communities and to many within our own families," she said, going on to note that the adults and medical professionals in her life drove her to believe that God's image within her as a woman was mistaken because of her tomboyish tendencies.

"There are tears that I don't show the world," she said. "There's grief, every single day, I carry with me silently. The only thing in the world that makes me angry is knowing that this is continuing to happen to children all across the United States and throughout the globe."

Responding to a question from The Christian Post regarding what impact the HHS' recent actions might have on other nations struggling with such issues, O'Neill noted that the Trump administration renewed a joint initiative earlier this year with Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda to push back.

"Under President Trump's previous term, we launched a Geneva Consensus Declaration, which was a multilateral organization of many other member states that support each other on this issue, as well as other social issues," O'Neill said.

"I just had the honor of speaking at the annual meeting of the Geneva Consensus Declaration about six weeks ago, and there's a lot of support, as you've heard," he said.

"There's been a lot of references to scientific studies in other countries here. I think the report we've all talked about today, that was published here, will be read around the world and translated. So there is a lot of cooperation between many nations."