AUSTIN—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has settled an investigation with the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston concerning the medical institution’s gender affirming care program.
The settlement was reached in coordination with the U.S. Justice Department and marks another chapter in the Trump administration’s effort to clear the path for states to oppress trans communities.
Paxton—who is competing for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination with President Donald Trump’s endorsement—requires the Texas Children’s Hospital to fire five Houston doctors who provided care, pay $10 million in damages to the state, cancel all gender affirming care services, and open a “Detransition Clinic” to reverse gender affirming care.
In TCH’s statement on the settlement, the hospital insisted that it had been “compliant with all laws” but needed to settle to protect their “resources from endless and costly litigation.”
The lifesaving power of gender affirming care has been repeatedly acknowledged by dozens of healthcare organizations in Texas, the U.S., and around the world. Meanwhile, multiple studies investigating the impacts of treatments designed to make trans people conform to their gender assigned at birth show increases in suicidality and youth runaways, with many patients reporting that recovery takes years.
An ex-patient at Texas Children’s Hospital’s GAC program, going by the name of Jas, told People’s World about their experience receiving gender affirming care from TCH as a teenager. He explained how the program provided comprehensive services, including gender affirming hospital referrals, therapists, and friends.
Jas described TCH was “the best and only resource” they could access. He particularly lamented that their doctor was “chased out of Texas by Paxton.”
Movement Advancement Project senior advisor Kellan Baker told The Texas Tribune that it’s not TCH that’s creating the clinic, but rather the Texas attorney general. She further argued, “Doctors should be the ones making decisions about how to provide medical care, not politicians.”
State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, D-104th District, is a member of the Texas LGBTQ Caucus. She argued that the settlement will push forward “an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society” and called the detransition clinic “a political monument of Ken Paxton’s hateful legacy.”
Chief Executive of Equality Texas Brad Pritchett told The New York Times that Paxton is “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.” On a separate Facebook post, Equality Texas elaborated that the decision “betrays trans and nonbinary Texans, their families, and the medical professionals who have spent years providing evidence-based care that saves lives.”
The group urged people to sign this petition condemning Paxton’s settlement.
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