It’s Time for Maryland to Ban "Gender Affirming Care" for Minors

By COLIN McEVERS, MD College GOP Chairman

On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to ban “gender affirming care” procedures – which include hormone replacement therapy (HRT), puberty blockers, breast removal and more – from being performed on minors. 27 states have taken the course of banning these medical procedures thus far. 

It is time for the Maryland legislature to follow suit in the upcoming legislative session and protect the bodies of confused children from being permanently damaged. 

Liberals make the case that these bans have been “led by national anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, legislators” who want to do away with “medically necessary care,” according to an article published by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). 

The lack of long term studies, absence of large randomized controlled trials and excessive flaws in data discredit trans-activists across Maryland who have deceived thousands of citizens into believing that gender affirming treatment is necessary and safe. 

Flawed Data, Severe Consequences

Democratic legislators and activists throughout Maryland will likely point to studies

purportedly demonstrating that puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy

have positive mental effects for children who claim to be transgender.

These widely cited studies do not provide legitimate evidence for the effectiveness of gender

affirming medical procedures on mental health. The rate of suicidal ideation remains at

rates of over 50% for minors, regardless of whether they received medical intervention.

Studies that show higher rates of depression among minors who are denied gender affirming medical procedures could be explained by the fact that medical restrictions are imposed on children with more severe psychological disorders, a plausible explanation that researchers ignore. 

Google Trends shows that gender affirming care procedures like puberty blockers for minors only made their way to the United States in the late 2000s and became widely available for patients by the mid-2010s, making it a very new phenomenon.

This means that only the short-term psychological effects on children have been measured. The thousands of children and adolescents across Maryland who have been subjected

to puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, double mastectomies (breast

removal) and other “lifesaving” procedures are experimental guinea pigs. 

In Maryland, Our Taxes Pay for It

In 2023, Delegate Anne Kaiser, who represents District 14 of Maryland, sponsored the

Trans Health Equity Act (HB 283), which was signed into law by Governor Wes Moore

and has been in effect since January of 2024. The law requires Medicaid to provide

gender-affirming treatment for all eligible Maryland recipients who may wish to transition, even minors. 

When a young Medicaid recipient, for instance, has her healthy breasts

removed at the age of 16, the taxes we pay are funding this mutilation. The law states

that these procedures are funded through Medicaid out of “medical necessity.”

State leaders like Delegate Kaiser, who is directly responsible for the legislation, seem

to think suppressing natural puberty, surgically removing healthy adolescent body parts

and administering hormone replacement therapy is so essential that it must be funded by taxpayers. 

How Big Pharma Profits

Most of the facts presented in this piece have been dire. However, if you plan to pursue a career in the Pharmaceutical Industry, there is good news. Large scale mutilation of Maryland minors is extremely profitable.

The market is only expected to grow in the next few years as confused mentally ill children and unknowing guardians who want to help their kids continue to be targeted by the Gender Industrial Complex. 

The annual cost of puberty blockers for a child ranges from a few thousand dollars to about $25,000. Hormone modification drugs range from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per year. Surgeries like breast removal cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

Costs associated with gender affirming care from childhood to death may comprise several surgeries, years of hormone replacement therapy, a litany of body modifications, and care for health complications which are likely to result from years of physically taxing procedures. 

Big Pharma and the medical establishment makes anywhere between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per transgender lifetime. In 2023, the total revenue for the U.S. sex re-assignment market was estimated to be about $1.7 billion. 

Here in Baltimore, the John Hopkins Center for Transgender Health alone pulled in a total of about $95 million for sex trait modification surgeries. Although there is no data for how much of the revenue comes from procedures performed on minors, gender affirming intervention is offered to children. 

Most minors who start the gender affirming process are unlikely to de-transition, which proponents claim is due to their joy at being physically in tune with their gender identity. Indeed, gender identity “experts” tell us that facilitating childhood transitions saves lives and that medical procedures like puberty blockers have no permanent effects. 

As previously cited, suicide remains extremely high among this population regardless of medical intervention, and studies on the long-term consequences of puberty suppression disprove the medical establishment’s misleading claim that puberty blockers simply “put a pause” on the natural development of minors. 

Puberty blockers – which are not FDA-approved for gender affirming purposes – are linked to infertility, decreased bone density, bone fractures and diseases like osteoporosis.

Pharmaceutical corporations who provide the drugs and treatment to these victims, consequently, pull in huge profit from these long-term medical horrors. 

Maryland prohibits alcohol and nicotine use for those under the age of 21, does not

allow minors to get a tattoo, prohibits piercing under the age of 18, among other

restrictions.

It is time for Maryland to protect vulnerable children from irreversibly

altering their bodies.