The Evidence Backs Mount Sinai's Decision to Stop Gender Procedures on Minors, No Matter How Loud the Protests Get

Two months after Mount Sinai Health System agreed to stop providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to minors, activists are still trying to pressure the New York hospital to reverse course. A rally outside Mount Sinai on Nov. 5 opposed the September decision, and a woman who went there to question the protesters now says one of the activists there struck her, Fox News reported.

The woman told Fox News that Jay Walker, president of Gays Against Guns NY, elbowed her in the chest as she pressed him on his support for gender procedures for children, and she shared video of the encounter. She said she reported it to the New York Police Department and wants charges filed. The NYPD and Walker's group did not respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment, and there has been no public word of an arrest. Walker has not been charged, and the allegation has not been tested in court.

Disagreement is part of a free country. Elbows are not. But the larger question is the one the counter-protester was trying to ask: what does the evidence actually say?

In September, the Justice Department announced an agreement under which Mount Sinai would stop providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures to minors, pay a monetary penalty and set aside $2 million for free medical care for people suffering harmful effects of treatments they received as children, Gothamist reported. The federal investigation had examined possible violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the False Claims Act, including alleged fraudulent billing, and the settlement includes an express denial of wrongdoing by the hospital.

Advocates for the treatments were furious. The New York Civil Liberties Union accused the hospital of caving to the Trump administration, and transgender advocates described the deal as abandoning patients, The Advocate reported. That is their position, stated fairly: that the hospital gave up care that young people need under government pressure.

The record that has built up over the past two years does not support the claim that these interventions are settled, proven medicine for children.

In Britain, Dr. Hilary Cass's independent review of gender services for young people, published in 2024, concluded that this area of medicine rests on weak evidence, and Scotland's government said it would weigh those findings, STV News reported.

In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services released a review of the evidence on pediatric gender dysphoria in 2025 that found the quality of evidence on the benefits of medical interventions to be low, identified significant risks of medical transition, and pointed to psychotherapy as a first-line approach. Advocates for the treatments, including those quoted by The Advocate, dispute those conclusions, and they are entitled to make their case. But a federal evidence review and a landmark British review reaching similar conclusions is not something a hospital can responsibly ignore.

The Supreme Court has also spoken. In United States v. Skrmetti, decided June 18, 2025, the Court upheld 6-3 Tennessee's law barring puberty blockers and hormones for minors to treat gender dysphoria, holding that the law did not trigger heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and passed the rational-basis test. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

That decision matters beyond Tennessee. It confirms that elected legislatures may protect children from medical interventions whose long-term effects remain uncertain. The Constitution leaves those judgments to the people and their representatives, not to activists outside a hospital door.

The pushback is coming from many directions at once: the Justice Department, whose investigation produced the Mount Sinai agreement; legislatures like Tennessee's, whose law the Supreme Court upheld; federal health officials, whose evidence review urged caution; and parents and citizens, like the woman outside Mount Sinai, who simply want honest answers.

The activists outside Mount Sinai want the hospital to reverse course. They have every right to protest peacefully. What they cannot do is change the evidence by shouting louder, and they certainly cannot change it with an elbow.

Children deserve compassion, patience and care that does no harm. For a child in distress, that starts with listening, counseling and time, not irreversible decisions made before adulthood. Mount Sinai made the right call in September. It should not let a protest, however loud, talk it out of protecting the children in its care.