WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denounced “chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures” for minors during a press conference Thursday announcing a ban on taxpayer funding for doctors conducting them.

Kennedy accused gender clinicians at the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics of betraying “the estimated 300,000 American youths ages 13 to 17, conditioned to believe that sex can be changed,” and violating “their Hippocratic oath to do no harm.”

“So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” he said.

“This is not medicine — it is malpractice,” the HHS secretary declared. “We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”

In a signed declaration Thursday, Kennedy proclaimed the procedures “neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria,” prompting applause from lawmakers, governors and other officials and attendees at HHS headquarters at the press announcement.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed rules barring hospitals receiving federal funds from “performing these dangerous and harmful procedures” on kids or using Medicaid dollars to pay for them, he added.

Dr. Susan Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, denounced the move, along with Democratic officials like New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“Patients, their families, and their physicians — not politicians or government officials — should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them,” Kressly said.

“I will use every tool at my disposal to fight this proposal and protect transgender Americans and their families,” added James in a statement.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm, a group that has advocated against the transgender procedures for minors, praised the proposed rules as “common sense, evidence-based, and morally imperative.”

“Many so-called gender clinics have already begun to close as the truth about the risks and long-term harms about these drugs and surgeries on minors have been exposed,” Goldfarb said in a statement. “Now, hospitals that receive taxpayer funds from these federal programs must follow suit.”

“This is just the beginning, but it marks a major step toward delivering a crippling blow to the child transgender industry,” he added.

Kennedy also said the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning “to 12 manufacturers of breast binders” to stop marketing the products to children with gender dysphoria.

If they don’t comply, the manufacturers may face enforcement actions that include “product seizures,” he warned.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, and National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya echoed Kennedy’s denunciations of the weak science that fueled the transgender craze.

Between 2017 and 2021, rates of gender dysphoria diagnoses in the US nearly tripled, according to an analysis reported by Reuters.

The US health officials and detransitioner Chloe Cole also rejected arguments that transgender teens and young adults are more prone to suicide — a “baseless claim” often used to pressure parents into OKing the chemical and surgical procedures, Makary noted.

“Pushing transgender ideology in children is predatory, it’s wrong and it needs to stop,” the FDA commissioner said, also accusing some doctors of trying to “remove parents from the decision-making.”

“We’ve got high schools now where half the kids don’t identify as a boy or girl. What’s going on?” Makary balked. “

At least $30 million in US taxpayer dollars funded gender procedures in 2023, Oz noted.

The US Department of Health and Human Services released a report last month that found studies supporting “gender-affirming care” were “low quality” and did not address possible long-term psychological and quality-of-life effects stemming from the procedures.

At least 10 experts and research groups later reviewed the Nov. 19 report, titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” and found no major faults in its findings that doctors should prefer psychotherapeutic interventions to surgical or chemical ones.

President Trump mandated the report via an executive order during his first week in office in January.

The UK banned the use of puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgeries for minors in 2024.