(WWJ) — Corewell Health has apparently reversed course on its decision to pause gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Late last week the healthcare system, one of the biggest in the state, announced it was limiting gender affirming care for minor patients and would no longer allow minors seeking such care to start new hormone therapy regimens. Those who had already started hormone therapy, however, would be allowed to continue.
Gender-affirming care is a blanket term for anything from hormone therapy to mental health care and surgery.
Corewell’s announcement came in the wake of an executive order from President Donald Trump that threatens to strip federal funding from hospitals that provide such treatments to people under the age of 19. Several states’ attorneys general are suing the administration over the order.
On Wednesday, less than a week after Corewell’s announcement, the health system announced it is “lifting our pause on new hormone therapies for pediatric patients seeking gender affirming care” and insisted the pause was only meant to be temporary.
“Care decisions are best made between physicians and their patients and families,” a statement from Corewell said.
“We briefly paused beginning these therapies to allow us time to assess the potential impact that recent policy changes might have on our patients and their health,” the statement said, “Contrary to some inaccurate reports, we never suspended any gender affirming care for any of our patients."
At the time of last week’s announcement, Corewell officials told The Detroit Free Press they do not perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors and that their team would “continue monitoring federal changes to rules and regulations.”
Corewell Health received public backlash in the wake of last week’s announcement. Ferndale Pride, the organizers of one of the state’s biggest LGBTQ+ festivals, dropped Corewell as a sponsor and returned money to the health system.
Dozens of other organizations sent an open letter to hospital leaders in response to the decision and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released a statement, saying in part, “refusing healthcare services to a class of individuals based on their perceived status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, may constitute discrimination under Michigan law.”
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