During Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearing, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri explained how Biden's HHS "issued a rule requiring that every doctor in America, including pediatricians who receive any kind of federal funding" – which Hawley said means "almost every health provider in America" – administer "transgender" interventions.

This would include, Hawley noted, both hormones such as puberty blockers and mutilating surgeries.

The rule stemmed from a redefinition of "sex" in federal health law, finalized in May 2024, to encompass "gender identity," making it discriminatory not to provide so-called "gender-affirming care" to those who identify as other than their actual sex.

Hawley pointed out that the rule has already been legally challenged. Health workers instigated several lawsuits against the Biden administration, and the attorneys general of states including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, and North Dakota, along with the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), sued as well.

"Will you rescind this rule that imposes this radical policy?" Hawley asked Kennedy.

"Yes, I will," replied Kennedy, adding, "And by the way, that rule is anti-science."

He pointed out that the "most thorough" study on transgender interventions, the Cass Review, found that so-called "gender-affirming" care has "catastrophic impacts on children."

"And that is science. It's a meta-review of all the existing scientific studies," Kennedy noted.

A significant body of evidence shows that "affirming" gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.