Several clinics throughout the metroplex will reportedly administer transgender hormones to children, according to leaked messages publicized by the local activist group Protect Texas Kids.
The messages apparently indicate that local clinics, including Pride Family Medicine, Prism Health North Texas, Cook Children’s Medical Center, and UT Southwestern Medical Center, will provide these gender transition treatments to minors.
The messages were allegedly posted in a support group for parents of transgender children on Facebook and published in a press release from Protect Texas Kids (PTK).
Treatments such as transgender hormone usage, along with gender transition surgeries, are described by proponents as “gender-affirming care.”
UT Southwestern has made clear that its “physicians are currently providing gender-affirming care to both youths and adults.”
Kind Clinic has also shared that it provides “gender-affirming care” at its locations in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas “at no cost.”
One member of the Facebook group identified Kind Clinic as a center that provides transgender hormones to children.
“My child’s therapist also gave us info for Prism Health North Texas,” the comment continues.
Prism Health advertises its services of “gender-affirming care,” including transgender hormone usage and sex-alteration surgery, though the clinic also includes “you are 18-years-old or older” as a condition on its website.
“The place we are going to is called Pride Medicine in Cedar Park if you need to find someone,” another reply reads.
Pride Family Medicine also advertises “gender affirmation” as one of its services.
Another group member said that their 16-year-old child, presumably a biological male, is receiving estrogen from this clinic.
The Dallas Express reached out to all clinics mentioned in the leaked messages. Only Cook Children’s Medical Center responded by the time of publication.
Kim Brown, the clinic’s public relations director, told The Dallas Express that the claim that the organization provides gender transition treatments to minors “is false.”
The other four clinics did not respond to repeated requests for comment via both phone and email.
These clinics “do not advertise that they participate in child gender mutilation,” the PTK press release claimed.
“It is critical that legislation is passed this session to ban this disgusting practice, and we must apply all hands on deck to expose and shame every institution that operates in the shadows to disfigure the bodies of children,” the PTK statement argues.
Legislation recently passed in the Texas Senate would ban gender alteration surgeries for minors throughout the state, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
The bill, authored by Texas Senator Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), would prohibit surgeries from being performed or drugs from being administered “for the purpose of transitioning a child’s biological sex … or affirming the child’s perception of the child’s sex if that perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”
U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), whose district includes much of Collin County, argued that “appropriate legislation should be enacted to protect minors from ‘forced transitioning’ until they reach adulthood” in a statement to The Dallas Express.
“I am opposed to gender transition treatments, including but not limited to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, being administered to children. [The] government’s primary role is protecting its citizens,” Self said.
Self also said that “the psychological problems and regrets being experienced by adults who transitioned as minors is being documented in ever-increasing numbers.”
Leading medical publications acknowledge the risk and uncertainty around giving irreversible treatments to children suffering from gender dysphoria, with studies suggesting that 70-80% of such children lose their “transgender feelings” by adulthood.
The American Psychological Association writes that “consensus does not exist” regarding how to treat children with gender dysphoria “due to the evidence that not all children persist with a [transgender] identity into adolescence or adulthood, and because no approach to working with [transgender] children has been adequately, empirically validated.”
However, other advocates maintain that gender transition measures should be offered to children who identify as transgender.
“Gender-affirming care, at its most basic level, is about validating and supporting children and loving them for who they are as they explore their gender identity,” said Dr. Jane Chang, a specialist in adolescent medicine, per Health Matters.
Chang asserted that these treatments are “evidence-based and done in a developmentally appropriate manner as we give patients and families the space to express the youth’s individual gender experience and journey.”
Dr. Moira Ann Szilagyi of the American Academy of Pediatrics similarly wrote that while “critics of our gender-affirming care policy mischaracterize it as pushing medical or surgical treatments on youth,” it is simply a “holistic” and “compassionate approach to care with no end goal or agenda.”