The Washington Free Beacon published a story today about a person named Fred (not his real name) who, despite a history of ADHD with autistic traits, was able to get cross-sex hormones prescribed to him after a 30-minute consultation at Planned Parenthood. The backstory here is important:

Fred has a history of developmental issues. He was diagnosed with autism—technically ADHD with autistic traits—at age four, struggled with depression and anxiety as he got older, and was expelled from three different special-needs schools due to behavioral problems, stemming in part from an impulse control disorder. He is an 18-year-old high school student in New Jersey and lives with his parents, who asked the Washington Free Beacon to withhold his real name.

Fred has a history of cycling through various fixations. Last year he was apparently part of an alt-right group chat. But last December he gave all of that up and announced he was trans. His parents suspected this might be short-lived but just to make sure they signed him up with a program at Children’s National Hospital that is the only gender clinic in the US which focuses on kids with autism. The plan was to have Fred carefully assessed to make sure this wasn’t another fad.

But the wait for a proper assessment would have been about a year. Fred didn’t want to wait so shortly after he turned 18, when his parents were out of town, he went to Planned Parenthood. There, he was able to get a prescription for hormones in about 30 minutes. His parents know how long the consult took because they could see when his phone showed he arrived at the clinic (11 am) and when his prescription was ready at the drug store (11:39 am).

“It’s criminal what Planned Parenthoods all over the country are doing,” Fred’s mother, a New Jersey pediatrician, said. “And most people have no idea this is happening.”

Criticism from Fred’s mother probably isn’t that surprising but even the doctor who founded the first pediatric gender clinic in the US thinks Planned Parenthood is out of its depth.

“I have always been a very strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and am pro-choice,” said Laura Edwards-Leeper, who co-founded the nation’s first pediatric gender clinic, at Boston Children’s Hospital, in 2007. “But they have taken on something that they are not equipped to handle.” The lack of gatekeeping is so bad, she added, that some of her patients received hormones from Planned Parenthood before coming to her for an assessment.

Others, like Erica Anderson, a former president of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health, say patients they’ve sought to delay from transitioning have simply turned to Planned Parenthood. “I’ve had patients desperate to get hormones where I’ve been the voice of caution,” said Anderson, who is transgender herself. “In some cases, they say, ‘I’ll just go to Planned Parenthood when I’m 18.’ Usually I can dissuade them but sometimes I can’t.”…

“Some young adults are developmentally more like adolescents,” Edwards-Leeper, who helped write the WPATH guidelines for minors, said. “Planned Parenthood really isn’t following the standard of care if they don’t take that into account.”

Edwards-Leeper went on to argue that although 18 is an adult, she would have preferred that those aged 18-25 undergo more assessment before being immediately handed pills.

"The 18-25 range has been recognized as a unique developmental period in psychology," Edwards-Leeper said, adding that she tried, but failed, to get WPATH to draft separate standards of care for this age group. "But in the gender field, we have chosen to draw a clear line at 18."

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 4, 2023

There’s some question if Planned Parenthood is even warning patients it hands these prescriptions to about all of the consequences that could result:

"That’s crazy," Edwards-Leeper said. "Vaginal atrophy should always be discussed. If they’re not including that on their list, that’s a problem."

A few branches do not even list increased libido as an effect of testosterone. See, for example: https://t.co/ztW4q5gL9B

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 4, 2023

Fred’s story is not unusual. One woman who considered herself trans for a time and then detransitioned also got her hormone thanks to Planned Parenthood. I wrote about her story last year. Here’s a bit of what she wrote:

Before long, my (trans) name was called and I looked up to see a tall, heavy woman with shoulder length brown hair and a clipboard. As we walked back through the halls of the clinic, she introduced herself as a social worker and told me we would do a brief intake to understand what I was looking to get out of the services at Planned Parenthood. I told her that I had drove six hours all the way from my hometown, and I think she responded with some comment about how I must be so determined. When we arrived at our room, she motioned for me to sit and she began the intake process. This process consisted of a handful of basic questions, which you can see below, along with her notes on my answers.

I remember the intake process taking about 20 minutes, at which point the social worker told me she would talk over my intake with the nurse practitioner, and they would decide if I was a good candidate for testosterone. I waited anxiously by myself for a couple of minutes, and then the social worker came back. She told me that I was a perfect candidate for testosterone, and since I had traveled so far, and seemed “so sure”, that they would even work around their typical policy of taking blood samples and waiting for test results to prescribe the hormones, and give me my prescription that very day.

Ecstatic, I burst into tears of joy and called my friend who was also trans (at the time, she isn’t anymore) that they were going to give me my first injection that day. My friend and I squealed to each other over the phone and when we calmed down, we hung up and the social worker motioned me into a new room. There, I met the nurse practitioner who handed me the informed consent document and asked me to read it over. I gave it a glance, knowing that I had already made my decision and some silly formality wouldn’t stop me. I and the professionals already knew what was best for me. I signed the document.

Helena took testosterone for a year and a half. “It had an extremely negative effect on my mental health, and I finally admitted what a disaster it had been when I was 19,” she wrote. She added, “the whole experience seriously derailed my life in ways I could never have foreseen when I was that fifteen-year-old kid playing with pronouns on Tumblr.”