An executive order to “protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation” was signed by Donald Trump.

Donald Trump quickly approved a number of executive orders, including a formal policy stating that there are “only two genders,” within 24 hours of taking office as the 47th President of the United States.

Trump has since issued two executive orders: one on the future of transgender individuals in the military and another on transgender care, which was approved yesterday, January 28.

Trump’s newest executive order on transgender care

The executive order, titled “Protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” charges doctors with “maiming and sterilising 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.”

The executive order labels it a “dangerous trend,” a “stain on our Nation’s history,” and demands that it “end.”“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization,” it argues

According to Trump, the US will “strictly enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures” and “not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another.”

Who’s impacted and what specific care will be restricted

According to the executive order, “child” refers to any individual under the age of 19.

The directive, which refers to gender affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation,” says that the policy will eventually prohibit people under the age of 19 from “using sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, oestrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex, as well as using puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex.”

Any “surgical procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimise or destroy their natural biological functions” will also be prohibited for those under the age of 19.

Transgender assistance from federally administered insurance programs, such as Medicaid and TRICARE for military families, will be discontinued as a result of the directive.