Officials at leading health care organizations, including Boston Children’s Hospital, sent a letter yesterday to US Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the US Department of Justice to investigate the escalating violent threats against hospitals that provide care to transgender youth.
Last month, a Massachusetts woman was arrested for calling in a bomb threat to Boston Children’s, and this is just one incident of violent threats against doctors, patients and their families, and health care centers that care for trans youth across the country.
“Our organizations are dedicated to the health and well-being of all children and adolescents,” the letter states. “We stand with the physicians, nurses, mental health specialists, and other health care professionals providing evidence-based health care, including gender-affirming care, to children and adolescents.”
Reports The Hill:
“We write to urge you to investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities coordinating, provoking, and carrying out bomb threats and threats of personal violence against children’s hospitals and physicians across the U.S.,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) wrote in the letter.
The organizations collectively represent more than 270,000 physicians and more than 220 children’s hospitals nationwide.
Medical facilities that provide gender-affirming health care to transgender minors have recently been the targets of online attacks, and the letter says “a few high profile users” are intentionally spreading false and misleading information.
Conservative commentators including Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh, as well as right-wing social media accounts with large followings like Libs of TikTok, have alleged that doctors are abusing children by prescribing puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones.
Boston Children’s Hospital, home to the nation’s first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program, was forced into lockdown last month after an anonymous bomb threat was called in to the hospital. A Massachusetts woman was later arrested in connection with what investigators determined was a hoax bomb threat.
Other hospitals across the country have faced similar threats, reporting that they have received harassing emails, phone calls and protests that have elevated fears among staff, young transgender patients and their families. Some worry that increased threats will deter transgender youth and their families from seeking gender-affirming medical care, which accredited medical associations have said is medically necessary and often life-saving.
Research has also shown that gender-affirming care can improve the mental health and overall well-being of transgender people, including youth. A 2020 Pediatrics study found that access to puberty blockers was associated with lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation among transgender adults – a conclusion supported by additional research from the Williams Institutethat found the risk of a past-year suicide attempt was lower among transgender people who wanted and received gender-affirming medical care.
Read the complete story in thehill.com here.
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