Shirin Heidari, Thomas F Babor
American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) – July 30, 2026
One of the Trump administration’s first executive orders, issued on January 20, 2025, was framed as an effort to defend women from “gender ideology extremism.” It defines sex as binary and attempts to erase gender as a scientific topic of inquiry.
In this essay, we argue that these efforts are unscientific and unrealistic. In contrast to the White House’s contention that sex is strictly binary, this essay points out that human gonadal development is more complicated and multifaceted, and that gender shapes exposure to health risks, access to care, interactions with health workers, resource allocation, and service availability within health systems, ultimately affecting health outcomes.