New York City just made history. The city's health department is opening America's first city-run gender-affirming care clinic — a facility the federal government cannot defund, subpoena, or threaten into shutting down its programs. It took political will. Boston has that political will. Now it needs to act.
Boston is home to some of the finest medical institutions in the world. The GenderCare Center at Boston Medical Center is the first comprehensive transgender healthcare center in New England and a national leader in the field. Fenway Health has provided affirming, low-barrier care to Boston's LGBTQ+ community for decades. Mass General, Brigham and Women's, and Boston Children's Hospital all run dedicated trans health programs.
But prestige does not equal protection. Every one of these institutions receives federal funding. And the Trump administration has made clear — through subpoenas, funding threats, and a sweeping new 400-page federal rule — that any institution acknowledging transgender people exist risks losing that funding. This is not hypothetical. Forty hospitals across the country have already suspended trans healthcare programs without a single court ordering them to. Boston's institutions could be next.
Mayor Michelle Wu has been one of the loudest mayoral voices in America against this administration's attacks on vulnerable communities. She has the Public Health Commission. She has the infrastructure. She has the mandate.
A city-run clinic sits outside the federal funding framework entirely. It is the one structure this administration cannot touch. Boston's trans community — its youth navigating identity, its adults seeking hormone therapy, its families looking for answers — deserves care that no executive order can strip away.
We're calling on Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Public Health Commission to open a city-run gender-affirming care clinic and make Boston a national model for protecting trans healthcare in the era of federal attack.