Legislative measures are introduced in several states of the U.S. to limit transgender medical treatment for minor patients. Entirely 26 states have banned gender-affirming care, and other states claimed the healthcare insurance and regulatory steps to impose financial costs and procedural requirements for stricter consent criteria. The recent abortion-related legislation deployed the patterns with prior abortion limitations and demonstrated the increased political influence in healthcare choices.
In January 2023, the legislature of Utah approved Senate Bill 16, which modified the Health Care Malpractice Act. This law permitted the revoked consent rights of minor patients receiving gender-affirming medical procedures at any time until they were 25. Providers face legal risks when patients receive consent from their parents and decide to challenge the legitimacy of their consent.
Patients typically have the right to pursue legal action for medical malpractice if they demonstrate a lack of informed consent for their treatment. According to Utah law, patients can revoke their prior consent agreements and allow them to seek compensation for permanent injuries. Consequently, providers may face risk due to disciplinary actions, loss of hospital privileges, and removal from insurance networks.
The restriction under this legislation applies multiple medical procedures beyond gender-affirming care. According to this legislation, new restrictions were made to the clinical procedures regarding patient’s sex characteristics irrespective of gender identity. The new law presents unanticipated difficulties to physicians in identifying the patients who might later regret their medical decisions despite caring for the patient’s clinical needs—the consequent inhibited decision-making processes and denied essential healthcare to minors.
The revocation of consent violates the principles of medicine. The core values of medical practices are based on informed consent, which safeguards the patients from making decisions and shields the healthcare professionals from legal repercussions. When patients are empowered to withdraw their previous consent, the legal framework after treatments is destroyed because it discourages medical practitioners from administering those medical services.
Restrictive medical laws may also limit the training and experience of future clinicians, thereby limiting the care is available to all the patients. Gender-affirming healthcare providers have discontinued their practices because of legal ambiguities that might trigger similar reluctance in various medical disciplines. Utah’s law damages the informed consent foundations, leading medical professionals to express apprehension.
The extensive political control in Utah affects healthcare and creates a substantial worry about medical choices in forthcoming decades. Abortion controls and gender-affirming care regulate the share in parallel regulation as they establish the groundwork for additional challenges in medical treatment bans. Continuing state suppression of informed consent will threaten physician-patient connections and multiple healthcare accessibility and endanger the existing U.S. healthcare framework.
Reference: Underhill K, Nelson KM. Pulling out the rug on informed consent—new legal threats to clinicians and patients. N Engl J Med. 2025. doi:10.1056/NEJMp2413570Â
