A few weeks ago, on Oct. 14, Fenway Health, Boston’s LGBTQ+ health clinic, announced its decision to stop providing gender-affirming care for minors and 18-year-olds. Fenway Health is backing down from its promise to provide healthcare to the LGBTQ+ community — not because of a change in law or any court ruling, but by choice. Fenway is choosing to comply with a May 2024 memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, designed to dismantle trans healthcare nationwide. That memo establishes two explicit priorities:
1. Blocking care for trans youth by discouraging puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries.
2. Rewriting science to fit ideology, declaring sex “unchangeable” and tying compliance to continued federal funding for Federally Qualified Health Centers like Fenway.
There is no legal necessity forcing Fenway Health to remove access to gender-affirming care. This is voluntary surrender — compliance out of caution. Fenway Health is making a cowardly deal with the federal government: transgender healthcare in exchange for funding.
Why This Matters
This is not simply about care for minors. By targeting 18-year-olds — legal adults — the federal government is laying the groundwork to eradicate gender-affirming care for everyone. Fenway has already walked through that door, putting all trans patients at risk.
One of Fenway’s founding beliefs is that “healthcare is a right, not a privilege.” That conviction made Fenway a haven for AIDS patients when the federal government was openly hostile to them. Today, Fenway is betraying not only the community it claims to serve, but its own legacy of courage in the face of oppression.
Meanwhile, Fenway has received millions in funding explicitly tied to gender-affirming care, including:
• $10 million in charitable commitments (2022)
• $325,000 to create a Gender Affirming Care Fund (2023)
• $250,000 in state funds to expand transgender healthcare access (2023)
We do not know how this dedicated funding will be used while Fenway rolls back access to trans care. At this time, we ask all donors to withhold donations from Fenway Health. We do not know how existing patients will be protected if federal threats escalate. We do not know whether Fenway is preparing to adopt the HRSA’s second “priority,” which would redefine sex as “unchangeable.”
What we do know is this: Fenway has already chosen compliance with the Trump Administration’s anti-trans agenda over its own mission.
What Courage Looks Like
The Trump Administration’s threats have put many institutions in difficult positions — yet many are fighting back, and winning.
• In Boston, MIT has rejected the Trump Administration's academic funding compact— an agreement that would have required MIT to limit international student enrollment and end DEIA initiatives.
• Boston Children’s Hospital successfully campaigned to dismiss a subpoena from the Department of Justice that asked BCH to provide the names and addresses of transgender patients.
• A federal court recently sided with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other nonprofits in their suit against three executive orders meant to restrict federal funding for organizations that focus on trans rights and other DEIA programs.
• Two additional federal judges have ruled that the administration cannot impose ideological restrictions on domestic violence prevention funding, nor ANY funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ruling states that organizations should not have to “compromise their values just to keep their doors open.”
There is no reason Fenway cannot show similar courage and defend its mission in court or in the public arena.
Our Demands
We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, call for:
1. Fenway Health to immediately restore gender-affirming care for all patients and reaffirm its founding value that “every person is entitled to the same rights, access to power and resources, and opportunity to live the life of their choosing.”
2. Mayor Michelle Wu, the Boston City Council, and all local officials to issue public statements supporting Fenway patients who have lost care, and to call on Fenway to comply with Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination laws.
3. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether Fenway Health’s termination of gender-affirming care for minors and 18-year-olds constitutes discrimination based on gender identity.
Our Commitment
The trans community has always supported Fenway — as patients, parents, staff, volunteers, and donors. Now we are asking Fenway to show that same courage in return.
Boston has long promised to be a city where trans people are safe and supported. That promise cannot coexist with Fenway’s retreat.
This failure of courage does not have to be permanent. Fenway can still stand on the right side of history — but only if it chooses to fight for its patients instead of abandoning them. Because we know Fenway Health is not the enemy — the Trump Administration is. But we will not sit idly by while Fenway does their work for them.
Signed,