New York City just announced plans to open the first city-run gender-affirming care clinic in America — a facility operated directly by the city's health department, outside the reach of federal funding threats. It is a direct response to the Trump administration's campaign to defund and dismantle trans healthcare across the country.
Philadelphia needs to do the same.
Two of New York City's largest hospital systems — NYU Langone and Mount Sinai — have already shut down gender-affirming care programs for minors under federal pressure, before any court ruled they had to. The same pressure is being applied nationwide. Philadelphia has outstanding nonprofit and hospital-based providers — the Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia FIGHT, Planned Parenthood — but every one of them depends on federal funding that the Trump administration is actively threatening to pull.
A city-run clinic changes that. When the city of Philadelphia operates a clinic directly, it controls the funding. It controls the mission. It cannot be defunded by a federal rule targeting institutions that acknowledge transgender people exist.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán said it plainly in New York: "I'm talking to parents all the time and they don't know where to take their children." That is happening in Philadelphia too. Trans youth and adults in this city deserve care that cannot be taken away by a hostile federal government.
We're calling on Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health to announce plans for a city-run gender-affirming care clinic — and make Philadelphia the second city in America to protect its trans community this way.