LGBT – Page 13 – Family Council

Planned Parenthood Offers Teens Cross-Sex Hormones at First Visit

May 12, 2025Jerry CoxLGBT, TransgenderLGBT, Planned Parenthood, Transgender

Phone call recordings by Live Action show Planned Parenthood facilities in multiple states are willing to prescribe cross-sex hormones to teens — sometimes at their first appointment.

Live Action reports,

Staff at seven of the 33 facilities contacted confirmed they would prescribe cross-sex hormones at the first appointment, even virtually. A video highlighting the undercover calls shows that at the Planned Parenthood in Mankato, Minnesota, staff were willing to prescribe hormones to the patient at the end of a single virtual visit. . . .

At five of the facilities, staff said the 16-year-old girl did not need proof of having undergone therapy, mental health clearance, or prior documentation as part of a mental health assessment before Planned Parenthood would prescribe cross-sex hormones.

Besides being the nation’s leading abortionist, Planned Parenthood has also become a major provider of gender-transition drugs and surgeries. Planned Parenthood’s facilities in Arkansas both advertise “gender-affirming care services” on their websites, offered in-person or via telemedicine.

While Planned Parenthood continues to promote sex-change procedures, medical experts are sounding the alarm about how dangerous these procedures can be — especially for children.

Public health officials in the U.S. and the U.K. have released stunning rebukes of the so-called “gender affirming care” Planned Parenthood and others offer.

Last year The British Medical Journal wrote that ”the advocacy and clinical practice for medical treatment of gender dysphoria [through puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery] had moved ahead of the evidence—a recipe for harm.”

These procedures can leave children sterilized and scarred for life, and doctors don’t know the long-term consequences they may have for children. That is why to date about half the states in the U.S. have passed laws protecting children from sex-change surgeries.

In 2021, Arkansas lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act.

The SAFE Act is a good law that prevents doctors in Arkansas from performing sex-change surgeries on children or giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Unfortunately, the SAFE Act is tied up in court, and a federal judge in Little Rock has blocked the state from enforcing it for now. However, we believe our 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.

HHS Issues 409-Page Reality Check Regarding Sex-Change Procedures for Kids

May 9, 2025Jerry CoxTransgenderLGBT, SAFE Act, Transgender

A new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services challenges the idea that children with gender dysphoria should be subjected to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries.

Over the past few years, it has become clear that the medical “consensus” regarding transgender procedures on children has been largely manufactured by pro-LGBT groups like WPATH.

Recently, medical professionals in different countries have begun reversing course by adopting policies that protect children from these drugs and surgeries.

For example, the U.K.’s National Health Service reportedly will start advising clinics to assess children who identify as transgender for mental health problems and other conditions. The new guidelines come in the wake of the U.K.’s decision to shutter its transgender clinic and stop giving puberty blockers to children.

In 2021, a major hospital in Sweden announced that it would no longer give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. The hospital noted that giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children “should be regarded as experimental.”

Finland’s Council for Choices in Health Care has reached the same conclusion, writing, “In light of available evidence, gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice.” In a comprehensive study published last year, Finnish researchers found transgender surgeries did not appear to resolve the underlying emotional and mental issues that youth with gender dysphoria faced.

The 409-page report the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released on May 1 further challenges the idea that children who disagree with their biological sex ought to be subjected to hormones and sex-change surgeries.

The HHS “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria” report reviewed the evidence and best practices surrounding the treatment of children who struggle with their gender identity. In particular, the report focuses on issues like:

Social transition
Puberty-blocking drugs
Cross-sex hormones
Transgender surgeries

The report highlights how puberty blockers are physically disruptive for children and can impact fertility, bone density, and neurological development. It also points out that long-term use of cross-sex hormones is linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The report also discusses ethical problems with the way doctors subject children to these drugs and procedures.

In response to the report, the editors at The Wall Street Journal called it “a rebuke of the political and medical conformity that has developed around gender identity, including radical treatments that are opposed by parents.” The Gospel Coalition’s Joe Carter writes, “Knowing that these medical interventions lack a solid evidentiary foundation and carry serious dangers should embolden us to lovingly question the rush to put children on the path to ‘transitioning.'”

All of this underscores why Arkansas was right to pass the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act in 2021.

This good law prevents doctors in Arkansas from performing sex-change surgeries on children or giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Reports show that since 2019, doctors in Arkansas have given dozens of children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Some children even have undergone sex-change surgeries. Arkansas — and other states — need to protect these children.

Unfortunately, the SAFE Act is currently tied up in court. However, given how medical evidence continues to show these procedures hurt kids, we believe our courts ultimately will uphold the SAFE Act as constitutional.

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

Guest Column: The Manufactured Consensus Around Trans ‘Medicine’

May 1, 2025John StonestreetTransgenderLGBT, Transgender

A question that ought to haunt the Western world is how, over the last decade, an obviously unscientific claim—that men can become women and vice versa—birthed an anti-scientific movement that still, somehow, won the endorsement of virtually the entire scientific and medical community in the developed world? Within a few short years, nearly every association involved in healthcare affirmed not only that a person can be “transgender,” but also a litany of ghoulish, harmful procedures that were called healthcare.

At least part of the answer to this gnawing question is that the endorsements were the result of close ties between medical groups and radical gender activists. As The Daily Wire recently reported, according to findings by the watchdog group, the American Accountability Foundation, one woman was listed as “managing” or “executive” director on tax documents for 26 major medical organizations around the United States. Sue O’Sullivan holds these numerous roles through her position as co-founder of Veritas Association Management, an Illinois-based professional services company. However, she is also managing director for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH.

Aside from showing up on social media and at WPATH events, O’Sullivan is listed on multiple documents by that organization promoting transgender “medical procedures,” including “putting children on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.” Her organization has led in promoting the most extreme forms of “affirming medicine,” including “removal of breasts for girls who identify as boys,” and has “opposed laws to protect kids from such procedures.” WPATH also condemned President Trump’s recent executive order cutting funding for these practices.

Tax documents also show that O’Sullivan spent around eight times as many hours working with WPATH on trans issues as she did with any of her other management roles. Those roles included titles at The American Pediatric Surgical Association, The American Society of Andrology, The Society for Cardiovascular and Magnetic Resonance, The Society of Academic Bone Radiologists, The Society for Vascular Medicine, and the Society of Ob/Gyn Hospitalists, to name a few.

Beyond the organizations that listed O’Sullivan in key roles, this watchdog group identified another 25 names with “ties to Veritas.” Many of these individuals have issued statements in recent years “in support of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for children or backing transgender ideology.” In a remarkable understatement, American Accountability concluded that “the ties between O’Sullivan and WPATH could jeopardize the medical integrity of other organizations managed by Veritas Association Management,” specifically by causing “the radical transgender procedures advocated for by WPATH to be normalized in the medical mainstream.”

This would be laughable and ethically horrible if it had not resulted in the mutilation and sterilization of many children in this country. However, organizations like these lead the American medical establishment and command expected public trust. This trust has been irreparably broken by issuing statements and taking positions as if they were the conclusions of careful investigations by experienced physicians. Instead, it turns out their public statements were the equivalent of marching orders, handed down from headquarters run not by doctors, but by ideologues, who presumably kept doctors in line through fear.

None of these revelations can undo the damage already done to lives irreversibly changed. Still, it is important to understand how the whole medical establishment was sucked in to this incredible evil. The vast failure of experts to resist what amounted to a pseudoscientific coup must be investigated thoroughly. The last decade has exposed an unbelievable amount of cowardice and incompetence among the medical establishment, especially in protecting children from powerful adults entrusted with their care. To be frank, a lot of people need to lose their jobs. Some should be prosecuted.

This is also a warning for the future. Every field, even medicine, is susceptible to values and worldview. Basic beliefs about the human person and the sanctity of life have consequences. Physicians and other providers with integrity must have the courage to stand up to ideological emperors, especially the ones with no clothes. And as frustrating as it is to be called “anti-science,” Christians must be prepared to defend created reality, and protect the most vulnerable from the next manufactured “consensus.”