U.S. hospitals charged nearly $120 million over five years for sex-change procedures performed on around 14,000 children, according to new data compiled by medical watchdog Do No Harm.
The first-of-its-kind database, which logs sex-change procedures given to children nationwide between 2019 and 2023, catalogs a total of 5,747 minors who underwent sex-change surgeries, along with 8,579 who obtained puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
Do No Harm believes the problem is likely even bigger than the data shows. The numbers, which are drawn from insurance claims data across all 50 states, do not include self-pay, charity payments, internal Veterans Affairs claims, or patients covered by Kaiser Health Plans.
To create its dataset, the watchdog group matched gender-related diagnosis codes with codes for procedures related to gender transitions, such as body modification surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers.
Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb said during a press call that the database should dispel myths that these procedures are a “rare” event or localized to a few places.
While the procedures are widespread across the U.S., Do No Harm’s database highlights a “dirty dozen” of hospitals, exposing ones that have been the most vocal in their advocacy for offering sex-change procedures to minors.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) leads the list, followed by Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Children’s Minnesota, Seattle Children’s and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
CHOP, which provided children as young as age eight with puberty blockers and referred children age 14 for mastectomies, trained employees in two Pennsylvania school districts on how to support students who want to change their gender, according to documents previously obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The hospital offered 122 minors sex-change procedures totaling $230,784 between 2019 and 2023, according to the database.
The top four states for sex-change procedures include California, New York, Washington, and Ohio, with more than 1,000 children in each state undergoing the procedures. In California, 2,024 children received sex-change procedures, including 1,359 who received surgeries, for a total of $28.9 million in charges.
In June, documents unsealed in a court case challenging Alabama’s ban on sex-change procedures for minors revealed standards produced by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) were not evidence-based as the organization claimed.
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pressured the organization to remove minimum age recommendations when it released its SOC-8 guidelines after expressing concern they would interfere with the administration’s political goals. At the suggestion of “social justice lawyers,” WPATH likewise avoided evidence reviews that undermined its recommendations, documents revealed.
Similarly, WPATH doctors admitted in closed-door footage obtained by the DCNF that medical interventions they recommend could lead to major complications.
A four-year systematic review of transgender medical studies conducted in England by Dr. Hilary Cass found weak evidence for giving puberty blockers to children as a treatment for gender dysphoria. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) came out against providing sex-change surgeries to minors in August.
The Supreme Court is slated this term to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to Tennessee’s law banning sex-change procedures for minors, one of 25 similar laws across the country.
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