While still recognized as one of the biggest lobbyists for abortion, Planned Parenthood has become equally aggressive about promoting puberty blockers and gender transitioning for children.
Besides making it a lead topic on its websites, the national organization is running an increasing number of ads and other promotional material on the subject.
Recently, Planned Parenthood released an animated video touting puberty blockers as a way to “delay puberty for a while” for “intersex people,” defined as people born with “a combination of male and female biological traits.”
The video appears to be aimed at minors and contains advice that includes “talking to a trusted adult” and an explanation that puberty blockers are a “simple treatment” to give teens “more time” to decide what “feels right.” It also ends the video with a link to PlannedParenthood.org/teens.
“Planned Parenthood has become the direct pipeline between the medical industry and the schools when it comes to transgendering kids,” Erin Friday, founder of Our Duty, told The Epoch Times.
“Of course they are targeting kids; that’s why they are called puberty blockers.”
Our Duty is a national parents’ rights organization that focuses on stopping the transgender movement for minors.
In a released statement, Planned Parenthood emphasized that its advice about puberty blockers and transgender nonconforming procedures is intended only for teens age 16 and older.
However, in a section on its national website titled “What Should I Teach My Middle Schooler About Their Body?” the organization specifically promotes puberty blockers for “preteens.”
“In order to get started on puberty blockers, your preteen needs to be in the early stages of puberty,” the page reads.
More than 75 of Planned Parenthood’s 239 offices now offer puberty blockers and other transgender services, according to The Heritage Foundation.
Some of its offices also offer online instructions on self-injecting cross-sex hormones and include referrals to places where minors don’t need parental consent to obtain them.
Planned Parenthood has also set up “well-being centers” in several U.S. public high schools, where gender transition counseling is available for so-called transgender students. There are 50 such centers in California alone, according to Friday.
“They are moving themselves as close as they can get to our kids,” she said. “The next step is to get them hooked on puberty blockers by gaslighting their mental health. They just need to get the parents out of the way first.”
In July, Amy Cannava, chairwoman of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) LGBTQI2-S Committee, said she supports defying parents’ rights and even parental notification laws when it comes to helping children become “gender diverse.”
“I recognize that parental consent is a big deal, but when I’m doing anything LGBT, I don’t worry about that,” she said on the podcast “Out, What Now?!”
Cannava also said she would like laws passed that make it illegal for parents “not to gender affirm” their children. And just recently—in a Sept. 28 post on the NASP website—she criticized proposed legislation that would require schools to obtain parental approval before involving students in any kind of gender-reaffirming activities.
While The Epoch Times couldn’t find direct ties between Cannava and Planned Parenthood, Cannava has participated in several events with that organization. In February, she testified along with the Planned Parenthood Alliance on a Hawaii bill that would require teachers and school staff to be trained in gender affirming students.
She also participated in a 2021 conference called Rainbow Families with Planned Parenthood and spoke at a 2019 symposium where Planned Parenthood was one of the event’s main exhibitors.
Planned Parenthood workers from several states this month conducted a door-to-door campaign in Michigan to promote Proposition 3, which is billed as an abortion protection measure.
However, after Inside the Classroom, a popular advocacy group on Twitter, took a closer look at the proposed constitutional amendment, it pointed out that the proposal includes a “buried clause” that calls for the protection of “an individual’s right” to “sterilization.”
The post drew many responses, including this one:
“Passage of Prop 3 will also give boys a constitutional right to be castrated and girls the right under Michigan’s constitution to be sterilized by way of a hysterectomy, or the removal of their ovaries — all without their parents’ consent.”
