The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Medicine announced on May 30 that, in compliance with a January Executive Order issued by President Donald Trump, it will “remove access to puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries for individuals under the age of 19,” marking a significant change in policy and procedure and handing a pyrrhic victory to Americans who believe in conservative values and the original intent of the Founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution.
Bowing to Trump’s ultimatum – to stop chemically castrating and mutilating kids or see their massive federal funding yanked – the medical center (established in 1765 as The Perelman School of Medicine) offered this on Instagram:
“Penn Medicine will no longer provide gender-affirming surgery to patients under the age of 19 in line with an executive order that prohibits the use of federal funds for such procedures.
The change — which will be implemented this week — follows a January executive order signed by 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump that promises to ‘rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,’ and remove access to puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries for individuals under the age of 19. Penn Medicine Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President Patrick Brennan wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the change ‘pertains specifically to gender-affirming surgical procedures.’”
Given the disastrous and ghoulish record of doctors, clinicians, and drug-sellers making boatloads of money (a 2023 estimate of nation-wide spending on such procedures, therapies, and services came to nearly $800 million, with an estimated growth rate of 11.4 percent), and the correlation between the “therapies” and horrific psychological troubles for the gender-confused “patients” (a 2024 study showed that people aged 18-60 who had undergone “gender-affirming” surgery had a rate of attempted suicide that was 12.2 times higher than average), many observers likely will applaud that at least their tax cash is not being handed to UPenn to mutilate vulnerable kids.
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But, since the state of Pennsylvania has statutes prohibiting parental abuse, and since the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide equal protection under their laws, many more Americans might wonder why its government has not prosecuted parents and doctors for engaging in this mutilation, so that the state could conform with that Amendment.
Evidently, the Penn Medicine brass don’t see the stark importance of that reality and those statistics.
Offering in its Instagram release just this kind of neological sentiment, Penn said:
“’This is a difficult decision that we know impacts patients and families who place their trust in our care teams,” Brennan wrote. “We remain deeply committed to ensuring a respectful and welcoming environment for all members of the communities we serve and providing comprehensive medical and behavioral health care and psychosocial support for LGBTQ+ individuals while complying with federal government requirements.”
And that new spin on “health care” and “psychological support” also applies to the contemporary manner in which Americans misread, or utterly neglect, the clearly written rules of the U.S. Constitution.
The kind of “services” or “therapies” a medical center provides via federal payment is irrelevant. The Constitution does not allow any federal subsidies, grants, or funding for any kind of work by private, semi-private, or state/local medical centers, and, as a result, Donald Trump not only has a duty to not send out the cash for these controversial activities, he also has a sworn duty to stop ALL federal funding of civilian medicine.
This reality is easy to understand on both a constitutional level and an ethical one, since no one has a right to benefit through the expropriation of wealth or labor from someone else.
But, for decades, politicians and special interests have worked to undermine reality, to, instead, promote this kind of unethical behavior as laudable and beneficent, as “showing how much America cares.”
They have engaged in a long-term “transition” from Natural Law – the principle of the Golden Rule and the right to be left alone – to statute, diktat, and artificial “law” rooted in nothing more solid than the changeable winds of political advantage.
So, while this is a practical positive and signals a decrease in the federal subsidization of disturbing gender “reassignment” procedures for young adults and kids, Penn and other medical institutions will continue to get federal money for other procedures and "services." In other words, this is not a complete victory.
That victory comes in stages, when the federal government stops all spending on civilian medical care, when the medical institutions stop expecting it, and when more Americans recognize that they don’t have a right to receive the fruits of someone else’s labor, regardless of the reason.