Most Children’s Hospitals Now Offer Gender Affirming Care

Dr. Blair Peters is among the latest additions to the surgical staff of the recently expanded Gender Affirming Care Unit at the Doernbecher Children's Hospital of Oregon Health and Science University. Courtesy of OHSU

Every major children’s hospital in the United States now has a gender reassignment surgical center, with the vast majority of all children’s hospitals offering some kind of gender-affirming care services.

An investigation by The Epoch Times shows that 50 states now have at least one children’s hospital running gender reassignment programs—ranging from surgical genital replacement to chemical-based gender reassignment.

The revelation comes on the heels of a market report showcasing sex reassignment surgery as a $2 billion industry with annual growth projected at 11 percent.

The report, prepared by Grand View Research, which tracks global market trends used by investors and researchers, indicated that the growth is in large part due to both insurance companies and government insurance like Medicaid increasingly covering the procedures.

Legislation to ban gender reassignment for minors has been passed in five states, with another 15 states currently considering similar legislation, but efforts have been stymied with federal judges in three of the states declaring the bans discriminatory.

Some children’s hospitals are ratcheting up their gender related services.

In its annual 2022 newsletter, The Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon, touted the expansion of its gender affirming care services, which it expressly states includes providing medical treatment for children as young as 10.

The children’s hospital, run by the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), also heralded an expanded gender affirming staff that includes a gender reassignment surgeon whose Twitter name is “Queer Surgeon,” gender affirming robotic procedures, and the use of a child-like avatar called Xploro that narrates information like gender reassignments at a child’s level of comprehension.

Suzanne Gallagher, President of the Oregon-based Parents Rights In Education told The Epoch Times she is concerned about what she sees as a growing connection between what she calls the “transgender push” in schools and the rapidly growing transgender-based medical industry.

Schools, said Gallagher, are adding more and more mental health staff and they in turn are declaring more and more students as transgender kids.

“We are starting to see schools use these mental health school counselors to threaten parents if you don’t support transgendering kids, we'll report you to child protections services,” she said, “it’s a very frightening arrangement because under it, kids become wards of the government and they can put then under the knife at these gender reassignment places.”

In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) urged the Department of Justice to investigate attacks and threats they said are being made against children’s hospitals and other providers offering gender-affirming care.

“Providers of evidence-based gender-affirming health care and their colleagues are facing increased stress and fear on top of the conditions they have faced while working on the frontlines of a global pandemic for nearly three years, the organization stated in a letter to the DOJ. “Families seeking care at these institutions as well as those providing their care fear for their personal safety in the wake of these attacks.”

The organizations said they represented more than 270,000 physicians and more than 220 children’s hospitals across the country.

They include the top children’s hospitals as ranked by U.S. World Reports.

All of them offer gender reaffirming care including Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), which recently came under fire for allegations that it was promoting gender reassignment surgeries to minors. The allegations are based in part on a video BCH posted, but later deleted of Dr. Frances Grimstad, a physician in its gynecology division talking about gender-affirming hysterectomies.

Currently, the Massachusetts hospital states in bold on its website that patients must be at least 18 years of age to undergo three specific surgeries—phalloplasty or metoidioplasty and vaginoplasty. However, on its eligibility page, the hospital specifically states that patients as young as 15 “can pursue chest surgery” at the hospital.

Some hospitals are tight-lipped about the age cutoff for their gender reassignment surgeries. One example is The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Maine, as reported by a local TV station.

Others are more forthcoming. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health Program in New Hampshire states on its website that it is accepting new patients “under 18 years of age” for what it describes as its “comprehensive and inclusive care to gender expansive and trans youth.”

In Florida, where a law was recently passed outlawing transgender treatment for minors, The University of Florida Health Children’s Hospital, the Sunshine state’s largest children’s hospital, calls its program “the Youth Gender Program ”and says it is for “transgender and gender-nonconforming, or TGNC, youth and their families.”

Children’s hospitals also treat young adults.

According to a recent report by the American Hospital Association, about three percent of patients seen by children’s hospitals are over the age of 18. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends a general age cap of 21 for patients in children’s hospitals.

Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, and Arizona, also passed laws banning gender treatment for minors.

Dr. Ximena Lopez of the Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the top 10 U.S. Children’s Hospitals, sued and won a partial reprieve from the ban from a federal court. The hospital has resumed treating transgender youth.

Other children’s hospitals in Texas, like the Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, also continue to offer a gender-affirming surgical program.

The children’s hospital does not mention anything about age in its details about the program—including under “Frequently Asked Questions.” It does not ask for a patient’s age on its intake forms.

Phoenix Children’s Hospital in Arizona, where a ban on gender reassignment surgery for minors is also under legal challenge, runs what it calls a gender support program.

“We are the only children’s hospital in Arizona with comprehensive Gender Support,” its website states. “We provide outpatient services that support the physical, mental, and social health of children and their families as they progress through gender identity development.

While Alabama law criminalizes gender reassignment surgeries for minors, a federal judge did lift the ban on prescribing puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones to transgender minors.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke ruled that there was no evidence that transitioning medications are “experimental” as claimed under The Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which made it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to prescribe or administer gender-affirming medication to minors.