Yet another hospital has backed away from the ethical travesty of carrying out gender transition procedures on minors. On Tuesday, NYU Langone announced its “decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program,” a decision it attributed to “the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment.” Even in the belligerently pro-transgender jurisdiction of New York City, shuttering transgender programs signals the shaky standing of the entire movement.

In a Thursday appearance on “Washington Watch,” U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brian Christine identified “the current regulatory environment” NYU referenced as the Trump administration’s regulatory and investigative efforts against hospitals who carry out gender transition procedures on minors.

“We are winning. … There are multiple hospitals — actually more than 30 hospital systems — that are now stopping their sex-rejecting procedures on minors, including NYU Langone,” Christine communicated. Furthermore, “We are proposing rules where no federal dollars will go to institutions or individuals who perform these sex-rejecting procedures on minors.”

This apparent acknowledgment of the legal landscape whipped up a storm of outrage against the hospital from left-wing elected officials. “NYU Langone: shame on you for bending the knee to the Trump Administration and closing the Transgender Youth Health Program,” exclaimed New York City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It is a disturbing violation of the Hippocratic Oath (First, Do No Harm) to cancel care that is proven to save lives.”

An eye-popping 73 New York state legislators signed a letter demanding the hospital reverse its decision, which the legislators allege may violate the state’s human rights laws — at least under the interpretation of current New York Attorney General Leticia James (D).

By contrast, conservative commentators recognized the hospital’s decision as one it did not want to make. “Call me cynical, but I don’t believe it’s a change of heart,” declared Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “I believe it is a policy-driven decision based upon the money … a realization that there’s a price to pay for bowing to the transgender ideology.”

The hospital’s decision came weeks after a New York jury awarded a $2 million malpractice verdict to a young woman who was rushed through a double mastectomy at age 16 to affirm her in a transgender identity she ultimately rejected. Christine called it “amazing that would even be allowed to happen.”

In addition to the potentially mounting malpractice costs, as other young victims of gender transition procedures bring another two dozen malpractice lawsuits, Perkins also pointed to the Trump administration’s efforts to turn off the public spigot.

“This would not be happening, or would not have happened previously, had there not been a gravy train [of] government funding for this.” Perkins protested. “What this administration is doing is [saying], ‘No, we’re not going to pay for this. We don’t agree with it. The evidence is very clear that this doesn’t help.’ It defies common sense. And so, when there’s no money, they stop doing it.”

Christine agreed that there never was high-quality evidence for gender transition procedures on minors. In the U.S. Department of Health’s “Gender Dysphoria and Minors” report, the department reviewed “gold standard science.” The review found that “surgeries, for instance, can have lifelong complications for these kids,” he said. “Using cross-sex hormones can cause infertility or demineralization of their bone, leading to fractures. In other words, doing those sex-rejecting procedures can have terrible ramifications and irreversible harm.”

Sadly, he cited, from “2019 to 2023, 14,000 minors had sex-rejecting procedures performed upon them. 14,000! That’s not simply epidemiology. That is a social contagion against these poor, vulnerable children.”

“What we determined was that the best way to treat these vulnerable children is with compassionate, competent mental health care,” Christine continued, “not with sex-rejecting surgeries, not with castrating chemicals, not with cross-sex hormones.”

Yet such open-minded, compassionate counseling has been attacked as “conversion therapy,” a long-discredited practice to which it bears no relation. When Christine testified in 2022 before the Alabama state legislature, in favor of that state’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, he said, “I was really criticized by those from the Left saying that you’re performing conversion therapy by saying that there should be mental health care. No, no, no, that’s exactly wrong.”

Alabama was one of the first of now 27 states to restrict gender transition procedures for minors. New York is not one of those states.

In addition to secular counseling, Christine also recommended, “If the parents wish, I believe pastoral care is very important as well.”

“I agree 100%,” Perkins replied, “because a lot of this is spiritual.” Christians like Perkins argue that transgender ideology rejects the basic reality of Genesis 1:27 that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

“I think we’re winning this war, but we can never take our foot off the accelerator,” Christine counseled. “We’re moving in the right direction, but we have to keep [up the] pressure. We have to keep doing what we’re doing to protect these vulnerable children and to make them healthy.”