By John Oyewale
The University of Virginia (UVA) Board of Visitors (BOV) adopted a resolution ending transgender-related medical practices for new patients who are minors, Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.
“Common sense and medical ethics have prevailed. I’m grateful to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors for its action today to stop harmful transgender treatments for minors and to transfer existing patients to other providers,” Youngkin said, while also sharing a post from CBS 19 News reporter Sarah Allen that included a copy of the resolution.
The resolution determined that current transgender patients could continue to receive treatment but new patients would have to be ” referred to alternate private healthcare providers until further notice.” Current patients could also be referred to private healthcare facilities.
UVA Health also announced the BOV’s decision. The BOV’s vote “reaffirms our commitment to offer our patients the best care we can, in accordance with state and federal law,” UVA Health said in part. (RELATED: THE WPATH TAPES: Behind-The-Scenes Recordings Reveal What Top Gender Doctors Really Think About Sex Change Procedures)
Common sense and medical ethics have prevailed. I’m grateful to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors for its action today to stop harmful transgender treatments for minors and to transfer existing patients to other providers. https://t.co/b5BFVKENtA
— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) February 21, 2025
The resolution follows President Donald Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order prohibiting or limiting “the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another” and “protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation” which “sometimes is referred to as ‘gender affirming care.’”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares issued a memo to UVA and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) health systems Jan. 30 instructing that “chemical and surgical mutilation of children must end immediately” in line with Trump’s executive order or risk losing federal funding, 8News WRIC Richmond reported.
Both university health systems complied, according to The White House. UVA’s leadership complied without consulting with the BOV but reversed course Feb. 13 — again without consulting with the BOV — once the executive order was stayed in federal court, according to the BOV’s resolution.
The reversal prompted the BOV to assert its “authority to make regulations and policies for the University” by passing the resolution and warning against any decision-making without consultation with the BOV.
UVA witnessed anti-Trump protests lasting an hour and a half late Monday, organized by Indivisible Charlottesville — a chapter of the anti-Trump grassroots political organization “Indivisible,” according to UVA’s student newspaper The Cavalier Daily.
A cohort of UVA medical students wrote an op-ed Tuesday in The Cavalier Daily protesting against the executive order and Miyares’s memo.
Sex-change procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort, as a transgender activist conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” That’s because of the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed:
Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to.
A gender transition can result in a lifetime of pain, discomfort, and medications, such as hormone therapy. As Britain’s National Health Service explains, hormones “need to be taken for the rest of your life, even if you have gender surgery.” The FDA notes that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and vision loss, and an FDA official who supported giving minors puberty blockers conceded that they actually increase suicidality. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reported Just the News.
Jazz Jennings is the most famous kid to undergo a gender transition, with a long-running TV show celebrating Jazz’s gender transition. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they asked Jazz’s mother, peddling a talking point that is often used on parents of transgender teens.
But by 2023, Jazz was miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Jazz became depressed, saying “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness.
Giving minors sex-changes or puberty blockers does not seem to reduce suicides. The transgender lawyer challenging Tennessee’s ban on certain transgender treatments for minors, Chase Strangio, conceded to the Supreme Court that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming treatment, and that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
