CHICAGO — After a week of uncertainty for Illinois hospitals and clinics over an executive order seeking to end gender-affirming care for minors, the Illinois attorney general issued a statement Wednesday saying the state will protect such care.

The statement, from Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the attorneys general of 14 other states, says that federal dollars remain available to institutions that provide gender-affirming care despite the executive order, and that Illinois and the other states will take legal action if that funding is halted.

“State attorneys general will continue to enforce state laws that provide access to gender-affirming care, in states where such enforcement authority exists, and we will challenge any unlawful effort by the Trump administration to restrict access to it in our jurisdictions,” the statement says.

The statement comes about a week after President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to end gender-affirming care that involves federal dollars, for people under the age of 19, and that prohibits institutions that receive federal research grants from offering gender-affirming care for people under 19.

The types of gender-affirming care the executive order seeks to block include medications to delay puberty, hormone therapy and/or surgery.

The executive order has ignited confusion among hospitals and other providers of gender affirming care across the country, with some hospitals and clinics in other states abruptly halting such care.

It’s unclear whether any health care providers in Illinois that offer gender-affirming care for minors have stopped those services in the last week.

A Rush spokesman said the hospital system is still providing gender-affirming care for minors. Lurie Children’s Hospital said in a statement Wednesday that it “is proud to provide access to comprehensive, family-centric, and developmentally appropriate healthcare in a safe and inclusive clinical space. We are reviewing the recent Executive Orders addressing gender care and assessing any potential impact to the clinical services we offer to our patient-families.”

Howard Brown Health, which receives federal funds to care for low-income patients and specializes in care for patients who are LGBTQ+ in Chicago, said in a statement Tuesday: “The order has no immediate impact on our operations, and we will be monitoring developments working with our partners. We are continuing to provide gender-affirming care to all patients who rely on our services and remain committed to improving the health of trans and gender diverse communities.”

Aisha N. Davis, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberities Union of Illinois, said she has not yet heard of any Illinois health care providers who have stopped offering gender-affirming care because of the executive order. Davis said the ACLU is heartened to see attorneys general from across the country stating that they will protect gender-affirming care.

“Our state has worked very hard to secure protections for transgender people including trans youth,” Davis said. “In Illinois, we’re hopeful that our providers are going to keep providing this very life saving care and rely on the fact that Illinois law is still good law.”

Illinois law requires health care providers to provide care to all residents and prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of gender identity, Raoul noted in his statement. Also, in 2023, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill requiring state-regulated health insurance plans to cover hormone therapy medications to treat gender dysphoria, which is when people experience distress when their gender identity differs from their sex at birth or physical characteristics. That law also shields patients and providers of gender-affirming care in Illinois from legal actions from other states.

At least 26 states have laws restricting gender-affirming care for minors, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.

Opponents of gender-affirming care for minors say it’s harmful to young people who are not yet mature enough to make medical decisions with potentially long-term consequences. Trump’s executive order calls gender-affirming care “chemical and surgical mutilation.” Proponents of access to gender-affirming care for minors, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, however, say it’s important health care with implications for mental health.

Outside of the U.S., some countries are taking a cautious approach to gender-affirming care for minors. Late last year, Britain said it would indefinitely bar the use the puberty blockers for minors to treat gender incongruence, except in clinical trials, citing, among other things, “insufficient evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty blockers for adolescents.”

Other states that joined Illinois in the attorneys general statement Wednesday include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

In their statement, the attorneys general explain that after a federal court temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to freeze a large portion of federal funding last week, the Department of Justice issued a notice stating that “federal agencies cannot pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards or obligations” on the basis of recently issued executive orders.

“This means that federal funding to institutions that provide gender-affirming care continues to be available, irrespective of President Trump’s recent executive order,” according to the attorneys general’s statement. “If the federal administration takes additional action to impede this critical funding, we will not hesitate to take further legal action.”

The statement came a day after PFLAG, GLMA and transgender young adults and their families filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland challenging the executive order.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal among the legal organizatons that filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf. The lawsuit argues that Trump’s executive order usurps congressional authority by withholding money that’s already been appropriated by Congress. The lawsuit also argues that Trump’s executive order violates federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex in health care programs receiving federal dollars.

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