Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration is attempting to remove terms such as “pregnant woman” and “mother” from the state’s health code within a series of proposed changes to Pennsylvania’s health regulations.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s roughly 500-page proposal, published August 8, includes multiple revisions that replace the words above with terms such as “individual” and “postpartum individual.”
Under the proposed changes, “pregnant woman” becomes “pregnant individual”, “mother of a newborn” becomes “postpartum individual”, so on and so forth.
In response, Chief Counsel Randall Wenger of the faith-based nonprofit Pennsylvania Family Council, said the following:
The changing of language in the [Department of Health] regulations represents the triumph of ideology over biology. This change of language doesn’t reflect reality; it obscures it. It erases female identity as a stable category in favor of a fluid concept of gender. The Shapiro administration is so concerned with affirming transgender identity that it can no longer recognize the realities of biological sex. The department cannot pretend to fight dangerous diseases with its delusions about gender.
The governor has promoted similar views on gender during his tenure. In August 2025, Shapiro joined a group of state attorneys general in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for banning pediatric transgender medical procedures such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries. Three months later, he joined a 31-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against a federal subpoena seeking the private medical records of transgender youth.
On Thursday, The Daily Signal published the findings of a taxpayer-funded study following 94 children who were given puberty blockers over a two-year period. The Oversight Project, a watchdog group, first obtained the final report of “The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth”, led by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who specializes in “gender-affirming care.”
The study reportedly cost $9.6 million and was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large,” the final report says. “These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.”
The report said that “at baseline, about half of these youths had clinically concerning scores for depression and anxiety. About two-thirds reported having thoughts of suicide, and about one-quarter reported having attempted suicide.” The report added that two years showed “increased scores for life satisfaction” and decreased levels of depression and anxiety.
When Dr. Olson-Kennedy was asked in October 2024 why she was refusing to publish the data, she responded that “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” as reported by The New York Times.
The Shapiro administration’s broader proposal includes changes to Pennsylvania’s health regulations that would significantly expand the authority of the state’s Department of Health. Proposed regulations include allowing health officials to enter a wide range of locations without a warrant during their investigations, including homes and schools. More details here.
According to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, the proposal was formally received on June 4 and remains open for public comment through September 21. You can read published public comments here.
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