Last year, Sutter Health proudly advertised receiving the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Award, a badge of ideological conformity publicized across their platforms. Yet today, Sutter is sending a very different message. After years of promoting puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as unquestionable medical dogma, Sutter Health has announced it will no longer provide these interventions to minors experiencing gender confusion.

This dramatic reversal comes just days after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released its peer-reviewed federal report thoroughly discrediting the scientific basis for pediatric sex-rejecting procedures. California Family Council covered the federal findings in depth in a recent article titled, Federal Report Rocks Sacramento: AAP, AMA, WPATH Misled—and Lawmakers Let Children Pay the Price.

Parents Learn of the Change Through Quiet Email Notices

The first public hint of Sutter’s policy shift did not come through a press release or media announcement, but from quiet emails sent to parents. As reported by KQED’s investigative team in their coverage, parents learned that Sutter would soon end all “gender-affirming care” for patients under age 19. That secrecy angered pro-trans-activist group Rainbow Families Action, which published an open letter expressing that it was “profoundly shocked” by the decision and calling it “unconscionably cruel” and even “illegal.” Their full letter to Sutter can be read here.

Yet what activists describe as cruelty, many parents, detransitioners, faith-based organizations, and medical ethicists recognize as overdue protection for vulnerable children.

California’s Attorney General Pressures Hospitals to Stay the Course

In response to growing institutional hesitation, Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a press release aimed at signaling that California law supposedly protects access to such interventions. Bonta asserted that state law “guarantees access to medically necessary care for everyone, regardless of gender identity,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even surgical procedures on minors such as double mastectomies. His full guidance is available in his office’s statement, “Know Your Rights”: Attorney General Bonta Issues Guidance on Gender-Affirming Care.

Yet, attorney and President of Our Duty-USA Erin Friday disputes the Attorney General’s assertion. “Bonta cannot legally require medical providers to poison children with hormones or require surgeons to remove healthy sexual organs of children,” she said. “His threats are purely illusory, and Bonta seems to have forgotten that the highest court in the land clearly sides with protecting children’s natural bodies.”

Bonta’s political messaging also does not reverse the reality now acknowledged by federal health authorities: puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones lack strong scientific validation, carry significant health risks, and rarely address the real underlying causes of adolescent distress.

Sutter Joins a Growing Movement of California Hospitals Scaling Back

Sutter Health is only the latest major medical system to reverse course. Earlier this year, institutions long considered champions of gender medicine began quietly walking back their services for minors:

• In February, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles confirmed it was ending initiation of hormonal therapy for patients under 19, as reported by the Los Angeles Times in its story, “Children’s Hospital to Stop Initiating Hormonal Therapy for Trans Patients Under 19”.
• Last July, Kaiser Permanente placed significant limitations on its youth gender services—an issue CFC examined in our article, “Kaiser Hits Pause, Media Hits Mute: The Unspoken Scandal of Teen Trans Surgeries”.
• Stanford Medicine announced similar changes last summer.

These developments follow major federal actions, including President Trump’s executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, and multiple HHS scientific reviews, including the newly released report Discrediting Pediatric Sex-Rejecting Procedures and additional documentation of risk factors summarized by KFF here.

The Medical and Moral Reckoning Has Begun

For years, California legislators and progressive medical organizations dismissed all criticism of “gender-affirming care” as bigotry. But as more evidence emerges, and as detransitioners continue to speak out, the narrative is collapsing. European nations such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the U.K. have already abandoned the “affirm-at-all-costs” model after reviewing the same evidence now acknowledged by U.S. health officials.

“Sutter Health’s retreat is a long-overdue admission that California’s experiment on vulnerable children was driven by gender ideology, not evidence,” said California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt. “These puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone protocols amounted to state-sanctioned child abuse, and someone must be held accountable for this incredibly huge medical scandal. The medical, educational, and legislative leaders were all in on it, pushing unproven and dangerous interventions while silencing parents and experts who raised concerns. This betrayal has eroded Californians’ trust in the medical community, which is supposed to operate independently of political movements and honor the most basic principle: first, do no harm. Instead, hospitals and policymakers allowed LGBTQ+ activists to dictate care, placing children on a path of irreversible medicalization. There must be a reckoning to fix this corrupted system, because kids deserve real care rooted in truth, not dangerous experiments driven by transgender ideology.”

Scripture reminds us that,
“The wisdom of this world is folly with God.” — 1 Corinthians 3:19 (ESV)

The denial of biological reality, the rejection of God’s created design, and the willingness to medically experiment on children stand in direct conflict with Christian ethics, parental rights, and basic medical prudence.