A children’s hospital affiliated with Harvard University has sparked outrage after stating that some babies know they’re transgender “from the womb.” In a separate, now-deleted video, Boston’s Children’s Hospital claimed a more significant number of children know “as soon as they can talk.”
The Harvard University medical system hospital is also facing accusations it rushed minors under 18 into sex change surgery.
Boston’s Children Hospital’s psychologist, Dr. Kerry McGregor, explained in a clip posted on the hospital’s official YouTube page the typical patients she sees. “So, most of the patients we have in the clinic actually know their gender, usually around the age of puberty. But a good portion of the children do know as early as — seemingly — from the womb. And they usually express their gender identity as very young children, some as soon as they can talk … kids know very, very early.”
The hospital in Boston sees children as young as two. It maintains new patients are given counseling before being prescribed pharmaceuticals. According to the clinic, it offers that child “space and support” to explore their gender.
“When distressed and vulnerable young people are offered an option to be somebody different, it’s very, very alluring, and gender ideology does offer that,” said Stella O’Malley, a psychotherapist specializing in gender issues.
The hospitals’ stances come as several states clamp down on prescribed puberty blockers for children. The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, previously said such moves are “child abuse.”
“The claim that children know their gender identity…seemingly from the womb’ is a claim with no basis in science or data,” said Dr. Jay Richards of the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It’s simply a concept imposed on the actions of kids by gender ideologues.”
Additionally, Richards said it was another sign of a “social contagion” increasingly seeping into medicine. “I think even 25 years ago, this would have been unthinkable.”
Richards continued, “Based on a series of events that I think, mostly due to social contagion plus the kind of ideological commitment, many now consider these the proper standard of care for kids with gender dysphoria, and Boston Children’s Hospital is just one of the first ones to do it.”
“Some kids conform more or less closely to gender stereotypes. This tells us nothing about their ‘gender identity,’ a concept that no child has on his or her own, that no one had until recently, and that doesn’t even have a stable definition.”
Boston Children’s Hospital has also come under criticism for performing hysterectomies and allowing patients as young as 15 to undergo ‘top surgery,’ which changes the appearance of the adolescent’s chest.
Hospitals scrubs’ gender-affirming care’ from its website
After public outrage, Boston Children’s Hospital removed all information on ‘gender-affirming care’ from its website, changing it to say, “To qualify for gender affirmation at Boston Children’s Hospital, you must be at least 18 years old for phalloplasty or metoidioplasty and vaginoplasty.”
“It’s very well known that there’s a lot of social contagion, for example, with suicide and with eating disorders and self-harm. It’s particularly common among adolescent girls because they have a tendency to co-ruminate together, to over-identify with each other, but it can lead to a kind of over-identification with each other’s problems,” added O’Malley.
Other children’s hospitals offering gender-affirming care include Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, which have had to shift all appointments to telehealth or severely curtail services in response to the recent uproar.
