Senate Hearing Reignites Fight Over Transgender Procedures for Minors

A Senate hearing on Tuesday reignited the national debate over gender transition procedures for minors, featuring testimony from a young woman who said she regrets the treatments she received as a child. Chloe Cole, now 21, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that she began medically transitioning from female to male at age 12, underwent a double mastectomy at 15, and later detransitioned at 16.

Cole argued that minors are too young to fully understand the long-term consequences of such procedures, calling it "medical abuse." "I didn’t know what was at stake," Cole testified. "I didn’t know how much it would mean for me to lose my ability to breastfeed and potentially my ability to have children when I went through this because I was still very much a child myself." She called on Congress to investigate medical institutions that provide gender-transition procedures to minors and urged a nationwide ban.

"This is not medicine," Cole said in her opening statement. "Medicine heals being sick, but me being female was not a disease." Republicans on the committee framed the issue as protecting children from irreversible medical decisions.

Sen. Bill Cassidy urged lawmakers to focus on patient safety rather than politics.

"Let’s put politics aside and first do no harm," Cassidy said. Democrats and LGBTQ advocates pushed back, arguing that decisions surrounding gender-affirming care should remain between families, patients and doctors — not politicians.

Sen. Ed Markey said during the hearing, "Gender affirming care for youth should be between a doctor, a patient and their parents, not politicians and the federal government." Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, defended gender-affirming care as medically supported treatment and criticized government efforts to restrict access.

"The government is baselessly attacking safe and effective medical care," Minter testified. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer for the advocacy group Do No Harm, argued medicine has a history of embracing practices later viewed as harmful.

"Medicine sometimes gets things wrong," Miceli said, comparing the issue to past medical controversies including lobotomies and opioid overprescribing. Do No Harm says it identified nearly 14,000 minors who underwent gender transition procedures between 2019 and 2023, including more than 5,700 surgeries.

The issue is increasingly being fought in courts and state legislatures nationwide. More than 25 states have enacted laws restricting or banning some combination of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and transgender surgeries for minors, while legal challenges continue to move through the courts.

The hearing took place in Washington, D.C., but the debate resonates in communities across the country, including Riverside County and the city of Banning, where local families and policymakers are watching closely.