Updated: Report Shows Hospitals in Arkansas Performed Sex-Change Procedures on Children

A report from the group Do No Harm shows hospitals in Arkansas have performed sex-change procedures or prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to dozens of children.

Do No Harm’s Stop The Harm report analyzes medical data from across the country. The report relied on data collected from commercial insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and VA claims, which Do No Harm says was thoroughly reviewed by medical professionals. The Stop The Harm report made headlines last month after it revealed that some 14,000 minors underwent transgender surgeries, took puberty blockers, or were given cross-sex hormone injections, nationwide between 2019 and 2023.

Do No Harm’s data for Arkansas reveals that from 2019 to 2023, 41 children were treated as “sex-change patients” in the state.

Of those children, data from the report shows three underwent sex-change surgeries at UAMS.

Thirty-eight children received puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The report also reveals that from 2019 to 2023, doctors and hospitals in Arkansas wrote 234 prescriptions for children to be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Unity Health in Arkansas Does Not Perform Sex-Change Procedures

The Stop The Harm report initially published in October mistakenly indicated Unity Health in Arkansas performed sex-change procedures on children, and Family Council shared this incorrect information in its initial coverage of the report.

Family Council subsequently obtained a statement from Unity Health President and CEO LaDonna Johnston, saying,

The information published by Do No Harm and then re-published by Family Council on November 18, 2024 regarding Unity Health is false and incorrect. Unity Health, an Arkansas nonprofit corporation, operates three general hospitals in Arkansas: Unity Health-White County Medical Center in Searcy, Unity Health-Newport in Newport, and Unity Health-Jacksonville, in Jacksonville. The Unity Health hospitals in Arkansas are not affiliated in any way with other Unity Health organizations that are located outside of Arkansas.

It is not possible for any physician or other practitioner to obtain privileges to perform “sex change” procedures at any of the three Unity Health hospitals, as these procedures are not allowed to be performed at any Unity Health hospital by the Unity Health Board of Directors.

Family Council also reached out to representatives of Do No Harm, who reviewed data from Arkansas for 2019-2023 with their data broker.

Following the review, Do No Harm determined that sex-change procedures performed at a facility in a different state were misattributed to Unity Health in Arkansas. The facilities are not affiliated with one another.

Do No Harm provided Family Council with a statement correcting the mistake, saying,

We would like to thank Unity Health in Arkansas for bringing a data error to our attention. Claims data incorrectly sourced to Unity Health in Arkansas should have been assigned to a Unity in another state. We apologize to Arkansas Unity Health for the error and thank its leaders for bringing it to our attention.

Do No Harm also provided Family Council with copies of the corrected claims data used in preparing the report. Family Council can confirm that Unity Health does not appear in the list of facilities that performed sex-change procedures or prescribed puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones to children in Arkansas.

Sex-Change Procedures Hurt Children

Medical professionals at UAMS and elsewhere in Arkansas have performed sex-change procedures or prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children despite the fact that scientific evidence increasingly shows sex-change procedures hurt kids.

These procedures can leave children sterilized and scarred for life. Doctors do not know the long term effects that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones might have on people, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was prompted to add a warning label to puberty blockers after discovering they caused some biological girls to experience brain swelling.

Three years ago a major hospital in Sweden announced that it would no longer give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. This year the United Kingdom announced a new policy protecting children from puberty-blocking drugs.

In 2021 the Arkansas Legislature overwhelmingly passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. The SAFE Act is a good law that protects children in Arkansas from cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and sex-reassignment surgeries.

Unfortunately, the SAFE Act has been blocked in court since 2021. The data that Do No Harm collected indicates doctors and hospitals in Arkansas performed sex-change procedures and prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children before passage of the SAFE Act and during the years that the SAFE Act has been enjoined by the court.

More and more, people understand it’s critical for us to stand up for Arkansas’ children.  Public opinion is shifting on this issue, with more Americans saying that it’s morally wrong to change genders. We believe our federal courts ultimately will recognize that the SAFE act is a good law and uphold it as constitutional.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

This article has been updated as of November 27, 2024, to reflect that Unity Health in Arkansas does not perform sex-change procedures, and to provide additional statements from Do No Harm clarifying that sex-change procedures performed at a facility outside of Arkansas between 2019 and 2023 were misattributed to Unity Health in Arkansas.