Planned Parenthood is not just providing abortions and other reproductive services.
The organization has begun offering gender transition medical procedures, but is coming under fire for the short window in which someone seeking to change their biological sex is able to begin receiving treatments.
After a 30-minute consult, Planned Parenthood is prescribing gender transition drugs, and is doing so without a letter from a therapist or formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
“It’s criminal what Planned Parenthoods all over the country are doing,” said a New Jersey mother whose special needs son was prescribed estrogen pills by a Planned Parenthood clinic.
“And most people have no idea this is happening,” the woman, a licensed pediatrician, told the Washington Free Beacon.
Her son, Fred, has software installed on his phone so his parents are able to remotely monitor his whereabouts. According to phone tracking data, while his parents were out of town, Fred went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Montclair, New Jersey at around 11 a.m. By 11:39, his parents received a text message notification from CVS, stating that Fred’s estrogen prescription was on its way.
The Beacon corroborated Fred’s story through nursing and medical board complaints, location data, prescriptions, documents, and electronic communications.
Fred, 18, has had a history of developmental issues since age four, when he struggled with depression and anxiety. He has been diagnosed with autism and vacillates between obsessions and extreme views, the Beacon reported.
Last December, Fred announced he was a transgender woman, just months after his best friend — who also has autism — began identifying as transgender.
According to the report, Fred’s parents began using a female name for him at home and attempted to enroll him in the only gender clinic specializing in autistic youth. However, the clinic has a waitlist of a year. Unwilling to wait, he went to Planned Parenthood during a time when his parents were out of town.
According to documents from Planned Parenthood, it is the second largest provider of hormone therapy nationwide.
Prescribing puberty blockers and hormones after a short consultation is not a rare, isolated incident. A Reuters investigation last year identified at least seven gender clinics that prescribe puberty blockers or hormones during a first visit.
“For those kids, there’s not a value of stretching it out for six months to do assessments,” said Dr. Eric Meininger, senior physician for the gender health program at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. “They’ve done their research, and they truly understand the risk.”
As waitlists grow at facilities across the U.S., more young people are turning to Planned Parenthood to skip the line, circumventing the few guardrails in place to protect them, which has sparked criticism, including from the liberal psychologist who helped pioneer gender medicine in the U.S.
“I have always been a very strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and am pro-choice,” Laura Edwards-Leeper, who co-founded the nation’s first pediatric gender clinic, at Boston Children’s Hospital, in 2007, told the Beacon. “But they have taken on something that they are not equipped to handle.”
Erica Anderson, a former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, said patients her facility has sought to delay from transitioning often leave and go to Planned Parenthood.
“I’ve had patients desperate to get hormones where I’ve been the voice of caution,” Anderson, who is transgender, told the Beacon.
She added that some will directly tell her, “I’ll just go to Planned Parenthood when I’m 18.”
According to a report from UCLA’s Williams Institute, the number of transgender youth has nearly doubled in recent years. Now, there are 1.6 million people ages 13 and older who identify as transgender in the U.S.
