The Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which operates a gender clinic, removed numerous videos and posts discussing childhood gender transitions, including irreversible surgeries, from its website amid public backlash, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
The CHOP Gender and Sexuality Development Program came under scrutiny in September 2022 after some of its training videos on childhood gender transitions were circulated online, and the clinic said it was tightening its security that October due to threats. Resources including videos in which clinic staff promoted cross-sex medical interventions for minors and advised school workers to keep children\u2019s gender identity secret from their families have since disappeared from CHOP\u2019s website; these pages are saved in online archives, but their links either redirect to error pages or go to pages that have been heavily altered with certain links removed.
A CHOP webpage linking to a document that promoted \u201cgender-affirming care\u201d for youth, including mastectomies for girls as young as 13, was saved to online archives in June 2022, but that page had been removed from public view by November. The document was produced by CHOP\u2019s PolicyLab, which conducts research and makes public policy recommendations on health care issues.
\u201cMany transmasculine youth \u2026 experience chest dysphoria, which is physical and emotional distress caused by the presence of unwanted breast tissue,\u201d the document read. \u201cIn research conducted with colleagues at CHOP, we examined the experience of chest dysphoria and top (masculinizing chest) surgery in transmasculine youth ages 13\u201321 \u2026 Top surgery can vastly improve the lives of transmasculine youth and is critical to their health and well-being.\u201d
The CHOP website also removed the public\u2019s ability to download annual reports on the clinic\u2019s achievements in medicine, outreach and advocacy, which were publicly available as of June 2022 but needed to be requested by email as of January 2023, according to online archives. One such report previously obtained by the DCNF revealed that the clinic had hired a social worker to help minors access \u201cgender-affirming\u201d surgeries by gathering letters of support and requesting that insurance companies cover the procedure.
CHOP\u2019s \u201cProfessional Resources for the Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic\u201d web page featured an LGBTQ Education Program section and a video resources section as of September 2021, according to online archives, but neither exist on the current website. An hour-long webinar on adolescent medical transition that advised puberty blockers as young as eight and hormones and surgeries as young as 14 was among the links scrubbed from the page, along with videos titled \u201cSupporting Transgender and Gender Expansive Students\u201d and \u201cDiscussing Sexuality and Safer Sex with Trans Clients;\u201d the videos are all currently unlisted on YouTube.
A family support and education specialist for CHOP urged school counselors to keep students\u2019 preferred names and pronouns secret from their families and other school staff in the now-removed video on supporting trans students. The same webinar said school bathrooms, locker rooms and sports should be organized based on gender identity rather than biological sex.
CHOP\u2019s Gender and Sexuality Development Program was one of several child gender clinics to come under fire in late 2022 as online activists publicized videos and documents detailing cross-sex medical treatments being offered to children.
Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital in Chicago came under scrutiny for promoting a \u201cLGBTQ sex shop for teens\u201d that sold sex toys including dildos, vibrators, harnesses and anal toys in its \u201cBeyond the Binary\u201d lessons for local schools, and Boston Children\u2019s Hospital received a bomb threat after unearthed documents and videos revealed the hospital had performed dozens of \u201cgender affirming\u201d mastectomies on children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n