A Missouri clinic that pressured parents to allow their children to undergo risky sex-change procedures has closed in what officials are hailing as a “major victory” for child safety in the state.
The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital closed last week following an outcry over allegations that doctors there were pushing for puberty blockers and other procedures to be used on minors.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said Tuesday that the clinic had “mutilated” too many children and that its closure was an “important step” toward stopping the controversial sex-change procedures.
“I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children,” said the father of four.
“Closing any clinics that have mutilated children is an important step towards that goal. I will not stop until the underground network of child mutilation clinics is permanently dismantled and those responsible are held accountable.”
Washington University’s Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital reportedly closed last week
Parents were forced to let their children undergo breast removal operations. Pictured: scars after such a procedure
The clinic did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
Sex-change procedures for transgender minors are a front line in America’s culture wars. Proponents of these procedures claim they are essential and save lives in a vulnerable group, while critics say the children are too young to make life-altering decisions regarding their health.
The youth gender clinic came under fire last February when Jamie Reed, a former case manager, published explosive whistleblower allegations about care teams who had hastily prescribed hormones with long-lasting effects to teenagers with psychiatric problems.
There, doctors routinely prescribed irreversible gender-change drugs to children as young as 12 after seeing them just twice, said Reed, who is gay and married to a transgender person.
When parents objected to their children taking puberty blockers in haste, they were told that failure to do so could result in suicide and asked: “Do you want a dead daughter or a living son?” Reed said.
In explosive testimony, Reed later spoke of a sex-changed patient at the clinic who regretted having had breast surgery and “was begging to have her breasts put back on after the surgery.”
The clinic said it had stopped prescribing hormone drugs to children in September after a state law banned the practice.
Reed says care for transgender adults at the same center has not stopped.
It is unclear how many children still use the center for mental health and other services.
Jamie Reed, a case manager at a youth sex-change clinic, reported how caregivers pressured young patients to take puberty blockers and hormones.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said the clinic had “maimed” too many young people.
Most children treated with puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones, like this patient at the Blue Mountain Clinic in Montana.
The pediatric center’s website remains active and says it still helps with transition plans and referrals to other specialists.
Some young patients had already turned to other providers for hormones or puberty blockers, including a growing number of providers mailing medications to minors in Republican states that ban gender-affirming care.
Advocates of such care say it saves lives for a group prone to suicide and that puberty blockers help preteens “pause” their puberty and buy time to consider life-altering decisions.
Critics warn of the growing number of young people identifying as trans, saying puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries are often unnecessary and possibly dangerous when counselling yields better results.
Republican lawmakers have banned puberty blockers and other types of trans care for minors in nearly two dozen states.
Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK are part of a growing list of European countries that have restricted or completely suspended transgender interventions in children.