By Vanessa Sivadge

2025 wasn’t just another year in American policy. For those of us who witnessed firsthand what was happening inside the most prestigious pediatric institutions — nurses and doctors who watched children being pushed toward irreversible hormones and surgeries they didn’t need — it was a moral watershed moment. I was silenced, ridiculed, and even threatened for blowing the whistle on sex change hormones for confused children in 2024. I know-because I lived it.

For years, institutions painted these interventions as “care” or “affirmation.” But behind the closed doors, I saw confusion, fear, and irreversible decisions made for children too young to consent. I witnessed colleagues coerced into participating, and I faced retaliation simply for refusing to compromise my convictions. Speaking out was terrifying — yet staying silent would have been complicit.

By early 2025, federal policy began to reflect what so many frontline workers like me have been saying for years. On January 28, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to end support for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries on minors. The message was clear: this was no longer a question of ideology; this was about child protection. Weeks later, on February 20, the Department of Health and Human Services rescinded prior civil-rights guidance that had treated these interventions as protected medical care. Finally, the federal government began acknowledging that children are not experiments.

Recognizing the risk whistleblowers faced, Congress held a hearing on April 9, titled Ending Lawfare Against Whistleblowers Who Protect Children. For the first time, lawmakers publicly acknowledged the pressure and retaliation faced by medical professionals trying to protect minors. I was honored to testify in this hearing alongside Dr. Eithan Haim, and together we exposed the cabal of insurance companies, pharmaceutical infrastructure, and hospitals for their part in the systematic biological erasure of young and impressionable children. Thanks to the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS launched a whistleblower portal, creating a safe avenue for staff, parents, and concerned professionals to report harmful interventions without fear of retaliation. This was a direct response to the lived experiences of people like me, and it felt like vindication: finally, someone was listening.

Over the spring and summer, federal agencies backed up these actions with enforcement mechanisms. HHS published peer-reviewed reports showing puberty blockers and surgeries carry serious long-term risks and have no proven benefit for children. The FTC began exploring the deceptive marketing of these procedures to families under the leadership of Chairman Andrew Ferguson. And the Supreme Court, in June, reinforced the states’ authority to restrict this care, removing legal barriers that had allowed the practice to expand unchecked.

By December, the federal government took matters a step further. On December 17, the House passed the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, making gender-transition procedures on minors a federal felony and cutting Medicaid funding for such interventions. The next day, HHS issued a formal declaration stating that these procedures do not meet professional standards of care and are unsafe. HHS also proposed rules barring hospitals performing them from participating in Medicare and Medicaid. The message could not have been clearer: protecting children now takes precedence over ideology, profit, or institutional inertia.

For those of us who risked careers to speak out, 2025 was validation. It was the year when conscience, science, and law finally aligned — a year when whistleblowers were listened to, empowered, and protected instead of silenced. Children are the most precious and defenseless members of our society, and they deserve our unwavering protection. I can’t help but reflect on how different things could have been if Joe Biden had remained in office. In that scenario, I might very well be in jail today for blowing the whistle, federal laws and agencies would not be systematically ending gender-modification procedures for minors, and courageous professionals who spoke the truth would likely still face retaliation, isolation, and career ruin. 2025 showed that courage matters, that truth cannot be indefinitely ignored, and that protecting children can and must take precedence over ideology, politics, and profit. Children are not progressive social experiments, and after 2025, it is clear: we will no longer allow them to be treated as such.

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