A graduate student worker at the Wagner School of Public Policy resigned after NYU Langone Health reportedly denied gender-affirming care to at least two patients.
Last week, NYU Langone canceled appointments for at least two children, both 12, to receive puberty-blocking medication. The medical center’s move came days after President Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to withhold federal funding from hospitals and medical providers that offer gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19.
Alex Denholtz, an MPA student at Wagner, has been a patient at NYU Langone since 2022 and had a mastectomy at the medical center in December. Denholtz notified his supervisor of his resignation Sunday evening, in which he said that NYU Langone’s decision “abandons the Hippocratic oath” and is “an attack on universal human rights.”
“There needs to be clarity and transparency regarding how this decision was made and who were the people involved,” Denholtz said in an interview with WSN. “We can’t just stop offering care because someone says they don’t want it.”
[Read more: Guest Essay: In protest of NYU Langone]
Denholtz said he forwarded the email to their colleagues, professors and employers and that he has received widespread support. He told WSN that medical staff who led their procedure said he had also spoken out against the medical center’s decision, and that he plans to also send the email to NYU Langone CEO Robert Grossman.
NYU Langone did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
At a protest against the decision on Monday, New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America called on attendees to send prewritten emails to Grossman and other NYU Langone administrators, demanding that they reinstate gender-affirming care for children. Since then, more than 100,000 emails have been sent.
“Denying these services is a complete dereliction of your responsibility as a medical institution to prioritize the health and well-being of your patients,” the email template reads. “This policy will directly endanger trans patients at a critical moment in their lives, and could potentially do irreversible harm.”
Denholtz said that for years, NYU Langone had been known among the trans community as a premier spot to receive care, hosting some of the East Coast’s most well-known doctors for gender-affirming surgery. In 2022, the medical center was named the first LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader in New York City, and it received the same title for the 12th year in a row last May.
“The extremely quick implementation of these orders shows how quickly the systems that were designed to help us can fail us,” Denholtz said. “It shows how willing they are to sacrifice us.”
After New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to health care providers Monday, warning them that the refusal to offer gender-affirming care violates state anti-discrimination laws, multiple sources have said the university started to reschedule canceled appointments. Denholtz also said that the NYU Student Health Center was continuing its regular gender-affirming treatment options.
Contact Dharma Niles at [email protected].
