Pediatric Hospital Allegedly Trains Staff to Talk Parents Into Accepting Children’s Gender Transition

A view of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in October 2021. Google Street View

A clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is purportedly training staff to hide from parents their teenage child’s preferred gender identity before eventually persuading them to “get on board” with their child transitioning.

Parent and conservative activist Megan Eileen on Wednesday posted online four video clips of what she said are created by CHOP’s Gender Clinic for training purposes. The scenario involves a teenage boy named Jacob, who is admitted to the hospital after fainting from not eating.

In the first clip, Jacob reveals to a nurse that he doesn’t want to “look like a guy” or “get big,” but his mother won’t get him hormone medication needed to suppress his puberty. The boy, who prefers to be called Amanda, says he stops eating in order to “stay skinny and more female.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” the nurse tells the boy. “So you’re not eating because you want to look feminine and feel more feminine?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of stupid,” Jacob replies. The nurse then assures him that doing so isn’t stupid, although his eating disorder is “getting a little bit dangerous.”

The next video shows the nurse joining two other hospital staff to discuss how to convince Jacob’s mother into accepting that her son is now her daughter, without any further talking about Jacob’s eating disorder or gender confusion. “It sounds like mom doesn’t know [what] Amanda really wanted us to know,” the nurse tells her colleagues. “We really just need to help mom get on board, so we can get Amanda the help she needs.”

In the third clip, staff members continue to address the teenage patient as Jacob when the mother is present, and switch to Amanda in the mother’s absence. The fourth and the last clip show the medical team explaining to a visibly worried mother that she has to “start identifying Jacob as a female because that’s how she identities.”

“You know, she loves you and she wants you to help, and you want to help,” a staff member tells the mother, who eventually admits that she is unable to “do that right away” but “will try.”

According to Eileen, she found these clips online as a part of “professional resources” offered by the hospital’s Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic. The clinic’s webpage that reportedly contained the videos is no longer accessible.

On its website, the clinic states that it partners with “medical professionals and schools to provide insight and training that will increase transgender competent healthcare and create more supportive school environments.” According to local news reports, the clinic was scheduled for April to train teachers and staff at Central Bucks School District, the third largest school district in Pennsylvania, but was canceled after schools were instructed to stop exposing students to transgender ideologies without their parents’ consent.

The hospital couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

The controversy comes amid a growing number of pediatric health care providers embracing “gender affirmation care,” a concept rooted in progressive gender ideology.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the national organization of pediatric health professionals, in its latest guidelines encourages pediatric providers to adopt a “gender-affirmative care model” and offer services that are “oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience.”

In such a model, transgender identities and “diverse gender expressions” aren’t considered to be mental disorders but “normal aspects of human diversity.” The model also recognizes gender identity as something that “evolves as an interplay of biology, development, socialization, and culture.”