PA4SBR previously covered the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)1 stopping all “GAC” for people younger than 19. A quick search of UPMC’s website for “GAC” shows the following statement:
Please note: Due to recent federal directives, including executive orders, UPMC is unable to provide gender-affirming medical care (such as medications and surgeries) to individuals under the age of 19.
Now, some UPMC staff have issued an open letter to UPMC protesting this decision. A local alphabet-soup blog has published the letter in full. Here is the complete text copied verbatim from that blog. All grammatical errors are in the original.
Dear Leslie C. Davis, Donald Yealy, Mark Tamburri, Diane Hupp, and the Board of Directors of UPMC Children’s Hospital,
We, UPMC providers and staff members, are urgently writing in response to your decision to end gender-affirming healthcare (puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery) for youth and adults under 19 years of age. This devastating action will irreversibly alter the lives of hundreds of UPMC patients and their families. Without immediate action to reverse this policy UPMC will put many trans youth and young adults at significantly heightened risk of suicide, depression, gender dysphoria, psychosis, harassment, and violence.
This medically necessary healthcare is supported by decades of scientific, peer-reviewed, evidence-based research, and every major medical and behavioral health organization in the United States. Taking away medication that has been safely used for decades will force our patients who are on puberty blockers and who have never experienced gender dysphoria to be transitioned to a gender that is not their own. Teenagers who are denied hormone therapy will be forced to endure incongruent puberty. Knowing these potential harms, many families of trans youth and adults will seek non-medically guided treatment to avoid forced detransition.
As we understand it, prescribing providers have started tapering trans youth and adults under 19 years of age off of their puberty blockers and/or hormone therapy with a plan to stop care within 3-6 months. There will be no new prescriptions following June 30, 2025. Despite how this action violates our codes of ethics and could be grounds for malpractice, UPMC has mandated that those of us who choose to stand with our trans clients and continue to provide them with medically necessary healthcare will no longer be legally protected by UPMC for these actions. Providers have also been directed by UPMC to not provide referrals to gender-affirming care to our trans clients under 19 years of age, leaving our clients without both critical healthcare and guidance from their providers.
We understand that the Executive Order 14187, dated January 28, 2025, and the Attorney General’s April 22, 2025 internal memorandum made threats to impact UPMC’s federal funding and threaten staff with litigation and loss of license if UPMC does not comply with the demand to end this critical healthcare for trans people under 19 years of age. These directives are aimed at terrorizing medical institutions and providers, but they do not change any existing laws. Gender affirming care is legal in Pennsylvania! Our political structure is built with checks and balances. The Executive branch does not have the power to remove funding without Congress’ approval nor the power to overwrite our laws. A federal district court successfully issued a temporary restraining order blocking full enforcement of this Executive Order. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act prohibits discrimination, including in healthcare, based on someone’s sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and transgender identity. Pittsburgh Ordinance No. 1843 protects gender-affirming care in Pittsburgh by decriminalizing it if banned nationwide, and Ordinance No. 1842 protects providers, patients, and guardians involved in gender-affirming healthcare from criminal or civil investigation or prosecution.
We also know that UPMC has an internal and external legal team, a recent history of spending $38 million in a False Claims Act Settlement (the same act that the Attorney General threatens to utilize to “pursue investigations” against providers and institutions) and an operating revenue
of $28 billion, plus $23 billion in assets as of 2023. UPMC has the power to fight back against unfounded and unconstitutional rhetoric. UPMC must resist the urge to pre-emptively give in to the Trump administration’s fear mongering and scapegoating of our most vulnerable peoples. Now is the time to stand firm in science, medicine, ethics, and values of care and justice.
As we stand with our patients, we are enraged. We will not violate our ethics or our oaths to do no harm. We will not stand by or be complicit in this atrocious attempt to eliminate transgender people from society. We are not powerless, and neither are you!
We ask UPMC to use its immense resources to fully protect us as providers and our clients instead of preemptively complying with threats from the White House that are decidedly not laws. The lives, health, and wellbeing of our clients and the safety of our providers depend on your choice.
Sincerely,
427 UPMC staff and counting as of publication.
To see a partial list of signers, visit the blog.
I leave it to you, Dear Readers, to find all the misinformation and myths this open letter contains.
PA4SBR will report any new developments at UPMC.
Meanwhile, some humor.
UPMC is not affiliated with either the University of Pittsburgh or its medical school. It is an independent 501(c)3 organization. See https://www.upmc.com/about .
Mass delusion.
Wow! Rife with delusion! So misinformed and outright wrong-think. I particularly chuckled at the "do no harm" and the "decades of research" statement. My goddess, how are we ever going to deprogram people from this cult?!