The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital has shut down its gender-transition operations for minors.
The move follows a provision in the Missouri SAFE Act that “creates unsustainable liability” for its procedures, according to one clinic.
According to the Missouri Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act of 2023, a healthcare provider is prohibited from “knowingly perform[ing] a gender-transition surgery” or “knowingly prescrib[ing] or administer[ing] cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs for the purpose of a gender transition” to a minor.
There are exemptions for those who received hormones and puberty blockers prior to the law’s effective date.
A whistleblower for the Washington University Transgender Center said its practices were “morally and medically appalling” by lacking formal protocols and administering the drugs to children without adequate review.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey responded to the whistleblower’s account, saying, “If even one-tenth of the allegations are true, they’re abusing children.”
A number of clinics have shut down transition procedures due to uncertainty about what laws forbid.
“The number of clinics stopping this ghoulish work once liability is firmly established illustrates their own lack of confidence in the long-term benefits for the kids and themselves,” said Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement with Family Research Council. “Clinics do this because they get rich and because they win progressive brownie points for doing so, but this suggests they may be unable to defend the work they do today years from now.”
Reporting from The Daily Signal:
A Daily Wire investigation this summer discovered that a transgender center at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital listed “irreversible infertility” as a possible side effect of cross-sex hormones. Missouri minors harmed by these drugs can bring a malpractice suit until they reach the age of 36 or until 15 years after treatment for their injury has ceased. In such a suit, the law places a heavy burden of proof on the health care provider, while the person harmed “shall be entitled to a rebuttable presumption that the individual was harmed … and that the harm was a direct result of the hormones or drugs prescribed or administered.” If a health care provider lost such an unfavorable suit, it would be required to pay a minimum of $500,000.
