Some Of Nation’s Largest Pediatric Hospitals Will No Longer Offer Children Gender Modification

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Potentially thousands of Texas children seeking to change their gender identity will no longer have access to puberty blockers, sterilization, and permanently disfiguring “gender-transition” surgeries in the state under a new law signed by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.

The Republican governor signed Senate Bill 14 on June 2, making the Lone Star State the most populous state to prohibit sex-change “treatments” for children. 

The new law stands to be a major roadblock for advocates of transgender medicine.

It will stop the nation’s largest pediatric healthcare provider, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, from offering “gender-modification” procedures to minors.

And it will prohibit three more of the country’s largest pediatric hospitals from offering services to children who want to change their gender.

Both Texas Children’s Hospital, with 973 beds, and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, with 490 beds, currently offer gender-altering services to youths.

Halting Surgeries in Texas

The new law just signed by Abbott bans surgeries that sterilize children by removing parts of their reproductive systems. It outlaws mastectomies for girls hoping to live more like boys.

It disallows the prescribing of drugs that induce temporary or permanent infertility, such as cross-sex hormones. And it prohibits removing any otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part.

The Lone Star State joins 17 other states now restricting “gender transitioning” for children. The Texas law will go into effect on Sept. 1.

Almost 30,000 Texas teens—from age 13 through 17—likely have a “gender identity” different from their biological sex, according to a study by the Williams Institute, part of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law.

And nearly one in five people in the United States who identify as transgender are minors as young as 13, the study says.

Under the new law, children in Texas currently on hormones for gender dysphoria will have to be weaned off those drugs.

Doctors who perform gender modification on children stand to lose their medical licenses in Texas. The bill gives the Texas attorney general the ability to enforce the law.

The Republican-led effort to pass SB 14—a priority for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican—met stiff resistance from Democrats as it was debated in May.

GOP advocates of the bill said cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery could cause irrevocable health problems or sterility in children.

Their Democrat counterparts argued that the decision to put children on hormone treatment and surgery should be left to parents, their children, and doctors.

Journalist Chris Rufo, an outspoken opponent of “woke” gender ideology and gender modification for children, posted an undated internal email from Texas Children’s Hospital CEO Mark Wallace on Twitter in May.

‘Immensely Heart-Wrenching’

In the email, Wallace announced an “immensely heart-wrenching” transition to modify “gender-affirming care” offered to children.

Action will be taken over the next few months to comply with the new law that will “prohibit procedures and prescription treatments for gender transitioning, gender reassignment, and gender dysphoria” for children, Wallace wrote.

He wrote that the hospital would “work with patients and their families to manage the discontinuation of hormone therapies or source appropriate care outside of Texas.”

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