Several healthcare centers and children’s hospitals have asked the Department of Justice to investigate terrorism and bomb threats. These centers, which offer HRT and other gender-affirming treatments for both minors and adults, have received these threats due to conservative influencers and public figures spreading misinformation about what treatment is available. A common misconception held by conservative transphobes is that children’s hospitals and trans healthcare centers perform surgery on trans minors. That is often not the case, the only surgery performed being the incredibly rare occasion of top surgery.
The hospitals that called for investigation are Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee (VUMC), and Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Instead of helping the hospitals, they have received more blame and scrutiny, as republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called for an investigation into Vanderbilt’s practices. A woman was even arrested for calling in a false bomb threat to Boston Children’s Hospital. By threatening a hospital, these people are threatening a whole community, not just select individuals.
“Whether it’s newborns receiving intensive care, children getting cancer treatments or families accessing compassionate care for their transgender adolescents, all patients seeking treatment deserve to get the care they need without fear for their personal safety. We cannot stand by as threats of violence against our members and their patients proliferate with little consequence,” says the American Academy of Pediatrics President Moria Szilagyi in a press release.
Them says, “The Justice Department under Biden has publicly weighed in on state-level fights over transgender rights, through filing friend-of-the-court briefs in discrimination lawsuits and in warning state attorneys general that attempting to block trans youth from gender-affirming care may infringe on the 14th Amendment. In April, the agency put states seeking to block trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care on notice by saying that such actions may violate federal law.”
