HOUSTON, TX — It required a new law passed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature to convince Texas Children’s Hospital President and CEO Mark A. Wallace to end his hospital’s controversial gender change treatments for children.
He ceased Texas Children’s gender dysphoria treatments and announced it in a letter to staff that was leaked to conservative culture warrior Chris Rufo. Wallace’s letter was published on Rufo’s Twitter account.
The hospital CEO said he was saddened that the nation's largest children’s medical care institution will no longer be able to provide hormonal and surgical treatment of children who claimed they wanted to change their sex. At the beginning of his letter, Wallace termed the treatments and procedures as “gender transitioning, gender reassignment, and gender dysphoria.” Later in the letter, he changed the term to “gender affirming care.”
Read the entire letter here:
Rufo’s investigative journalism revealed that Texas Children’s had been “secretly providing puberty blockers and other treatments to children as young as 11 years old.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital’s treatment of children, Rufo reported.
Texas Children’s Hospital is financed in part with private donations. In 2021, for example, the hospital raised $51.5 million from philanthropists. Only about $3.2 million of that was to the hospital’s portion of the Children’s Miracle Network.
Wallace said the reason for his order to cease gender transitioning procedures and therapy to minors is because of the passage of Texas Senate Bill 14. While the law doesn’t go into effect until Sept. 1, 2023, he promised the hospital system’s staff that that even after the law goes into effect, “we will all remain dedicated to educating and amplifying the importance of safe, high-quality transgender medicine programs.” He promised to refer children wanting to change their sex to an out-of-state facility,
Governor Greg Abbott promised to sign the bill into law. “It is about protecting children,” the governor said. Left-leaning activist groups are promising a legal challenge to SB 14, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center. These groups will sue to keep the law from taking effect.
Senator Donna Campbell of New Braunfels, who earned her medical doctor's degree from Texas Tech, authored much of the bill. It forbids anyone in Texas to provide gender transition medical treatments, including puberty blocker pharmaceuticals and surgeries, to anyone under 18 years of age.
Texas Children’s Hospital is based in Houston. Read Christopher Rufo’s investigative report on how the nation's largest children’s charity hospital openly promoted and provided “gender-affirming care,” to include genital surgeries “on a case-by-case basis”, to children.
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