Bishop Barron applauds Trump’s action on transgender surgery for children

John Lavenburg/Crux• January 30, 2025

Bishop Robert Barron has praised a presidential executive order that prohibits the US federal government from promoting or funding transgender surgeries and related procedures for children.

The popular and well-known US bishop – who has emerged as a latter-day Bishop Fulton Sheen for the digital age – highlighted that “helping young people accept their bodies and their vocation as women and men is the true path to freedom and happiness”.

President Donald Trump signed the executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” on 28 January. The order declares that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” transgender surgeries for children, “and it will vigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” such procedures.

“I welcome the President’s Executive Order prohibiting the promotion of federal funding of procedures that, based on a false understanding of human nature, attempt to change a child’s sex,” Barron, the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and who also serves as chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, said in a 29 January statement.

“So many young people who have been victims of this ideological crusade have profound regrets over its life altering consequences, such as infertility and lifelong dependence on costly hormone therapies that have significant side effects.

“It is unacceptable that our children are encouraged to undergo destructive medical interventions instead of receiving access to authentic and bodily-unitive care,” the bishop said.

Explaining the executive order, Trump called the ability of adults to attempt to change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions a “radical and false claim”, adding that “this dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end”.

The president also noted the numbers of children who regret the transgender surgeries they undergo.

“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the executive order states.

“Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilisation.”

The executive order classifies “child” or “children” as an individual under the age of 19 years old.

The executive order instructs federal agencies to rescind or amend all policies that rely on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). It also instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who display gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or “other identity-based confusion”.

Barron said this aspect of the order is important.

“I also applaud the Executive Order’s aim to identify and develop research-based therapies to aid young people struggling with gender dysphoria,” Barron said. “These individuals are loved by God and possess the same inherent dignity that all persons do.”

He added: “They deserve care that heals rather than harms,” before highlighting Pope Francis’s message in Dignitas Infinita that “we are called to accept the gift of our bodies created in God’s image and likeness as male and female”.

The executive order on transgender surgery for children comes amid a flurry of other presidential executive orders signed by Donald Trump during the first days of his second term, many of which seek to undo policies established by the previous administration of President Joe Biden.

RELATED: Trump signs executive order to restore ‘biological reality’ in federal policy

Photo: Bishop Robert Barron. (Image © Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.)