Texas Children's Hospital lied about stopping gender care

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Last year Texas Children’s Hospital announced that they would stop providing “gender-affirming” care, or in plain English the sterilization and mutilation of children.

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They lied.

Over a year ago the hospital decided they had to stop providing these “services” due to an executive order propagated by Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.

The hospital said the policy was decided “after assessing the Attorney General’s and Governor’s actions,” which include a recent order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) directing Texas’s child welfare agency to investigate reports of children receiving gender-affirming care as “child abuse.”

It was a big deal, and the hospital’s Chief Pediatrician resigned, apparently over the issue. She had been there only six months.

It was all a ruse. Catherine Gordon, the Chief Pediatrician, moved over to Baylor’s College of Medicine, and now Texas Children’s and Baylor are teamed up to do…gender-affirming care.

Who would have ever guessed that people committed to sterilizing and mutilating children in the name of the lie that men and women can change their sex would ever set out to deceive the public.

Not me. I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

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Christopher Rufo, who is a very busy man, did the investigation into Texas Children’s outright lies to the public. You may know Rufo from his work at City Journal (an excellent publication), or perhaps his leadership at Florida’s New College, where he is working with Governor DeSantis to clean out the DEI rot and turn the college back into a real educational institution.

I wish I had half his stamina, and a third of his brains. He is doing yeoman’s work.

Rufo lays out the scam in his latest at City Journal.

I have obtained exclusive whistleblower documents showing that, despite its public statements, the Houston-based children’s hospital—the largest in the United States—has secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions, including the use of implantable puberty blockers, on minor children. (When reached via email, hospital spokeswoman Kelley Carville responded: “We have no comment.”)

As an institution, Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) has openly promoted “gender-affirming care” to its physicians. In January of this year, TCH and Baylor College of Medicine, which works in partnership with the children’s hospital, hosted a “pediatric grand rounds” presentation titled “Medical and Psychological Care of Gender-Diverse Youth,” describing the process of sex-change interventions, from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones to genital surgeries.

According to this presentation, TCH and Baylor College of Medicine encouraged doctors to begin treatment with puberty blockers and hormones during adolescence, and then consider surgeries, including breast removal and genital reconstruction, in adulthood—though the presenters explained that some surgical procedures could be appropriate for “adolescents on [a] case-by-case basis.”

Richard Roberts, a University of Virginia-trained endocrinologist and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine who co-presented the grand rounds, is also listed in medical records as performing transgender medical procedures on minors at TCH. According to these records, Roberts has managed patients ranging in age from 12 to 17 years old for “gender identity” and “gender dysphoria,” with indications for “medication,” “testosterone levels,” “medicine refill,” and “specialty services.”

Despite the hospital’s statement that it had ceased these practices, Roberts has continued to manage a heavy caseload for “gender-affirming care,” including multiple patient visits in a single day last week for “gender dysphoria” and “gender identity,” and another for “HRT [hormone replacement therapy].”

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It has been no secret that Texas Children’s has continued to advocate and agitate for providing medical interventions on children for gender dysphoria. At no point did the Hospital administration reverse course and claim they oppose the procedures.

They did, however, loudly announce that they were stopping providing the services in response to Greg Abbott’s executive order.

For most people that would seem to have settled the matter. We aren’t in the habit–yet–of assuming that authoritative institutions such as the largest children’s hospital in the country are filled with liars.

We should assume this, of course. After the past 3 years of medical gaslighting, and the past decade of political and cultural gaslighting, we should start getting in the habit of never trusting and always verifying.

It’s sad, really. I grew up respecting most American institutions, although I always knew that the MSM was filled with gasbags. I figured out that the media was Left-win as a kid, and even when I was far more liberal than today (yes, I voted Democrat when I was very young) I was disgusted by how open they were about their political leanings.

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But the medical establishment? I thought they meant well, even if they were far too often confident about things which are not true. Government? I assumed that the political battles were over policy, and that nobody wanted to impose actual tyranny. Scientists? Search for truth and all that jazz.

Nope. It’s all about money and power, with a dash of ideological zealotry.

Let this be a warning to you, should you still need it: never assume that the Left is telling you the truth, especially when they are telling you what you want to hear.

As for Texas Children’s? Well, Governor Abbott promulgated an order to investigate people who provide “gender-affirming care” to minors, so investigate away, Governor.

These people belong in jail for child abuse, so let’s get to it.

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