City Comptroller Brad Lander lamented an underage kid’s access to puberty blockers in a tirade against President Trump’s executive order banning federal funding for sex-change surgeries and other treatments.
“I literally this morning was talking to a mom whose kid has puberty blockers prescribed by a doc at NYU Langone,” Lander, a candidate for mayor, said during an interview with LGBT activist Marti Cummings. “She had to explain to him why his doctor is not going to continue to see him any more.”
Lander said he backed a legal opinion from state Attorney General Letitia James’ that said denying “gender affirming care” violates the state’s human rights law.
“We treat everyone equally. We don’t discriminate based on gender identity,” Lander said.
Transgender medical treatment was a hot-button issue in last fall’s presidential campaign.
Trump blasted former Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for government-guaranteed transgender surgeries for prison inmates and migrants held in detention facilities. Even Democratic strategists said ad was effective and hurt Harris with voters.
Lander said if he were mayor, he’d be urging hospitals to continue to provide the care, particularly those run by the city’s public hospital system, Health+Hospitals.
“There’s a lot the mayor of New York City could be doing,” Lander said, referring to Mayor Eric Adams. “The mayor could be doing that as well.
“That’s what I would do as mayor.”
Lander said he immediately called AG James when he heard about Trump’s order banning funding to hospitals that perform the surgeries and procedures.
New York’s major hospitals receive billions of dollars in Medicaid funding and medical grants. Hospitals that offer gender reassignment care — including NYU Langone and Mount Sinai — have reportedly stopped accepting new patients.
James, according to Lander, touched based with honchos at NYU Langone and Mount Sinai to let them know that the law of New York “requires them not to discriminate against [patients] based on gender identity.”
“Trump is trying to deny that gender affirming care,” Lander said, calling the situation “urgent”
But many medical professionals oppose transition surgeries as harmful to minors.
“Transgender treatment are a direct assault on a child’s mental and physical health,” Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and chairman of the group Do No Harm, said Wednesday in a Post op-ed column.
“An overwhelming percentage of kids who are confused about their gender suffer from mental health or behavioral-health issues. Think depression, attention deficit disorder and autism.”
Goldfarb said the young people need psychiatric help, adding, “What they don’t need are experimental, invasive and irreversible treatments that fundamentally change their developing minds and bodies. Transgender treatments are incredibly dangerous for kids.”
Other countries, including England, have restricted trans surgery or treatment.
England announced last year that it will not routinely offer puberty-blocking drugs to children at gender identity clinics, saying more evidence is needed about the potential benefits and harms.
