By Edie Heipel
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 9, 2022 / 15:19 pm
The curtains have been pulled back on America’s top abortion provider: Planned Parenthood’s business model now offers “gender-affirming health care,” including prescribing life-altering hormone injections to children as young as 16.
According to Planned Parenthood itself, the abortion company has inched its way to becoming the second-largest provider of hormonal injections in America.
Experts across the political spectrum — including both religious and non-religious perspectives — warn this development is dangerous, as the number of transgender-identifying youth continues to rise nationally.
Planned Parenthood prescribes ‘masculinizing’ and ‘feminizing’ injections
Planned Parenthood providing transgender services isn’t necessarily anything new, as pro-life groups and independent journalists such as Abigail Shrier have reported in the past.
In a piece published this week, Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins highlighted Planned Parenthood’s escalated focus on transitioning children with gender dysphoria.
The record reveals some shocking statistics, according to Planned Parenthood’s own materials.
Currently, over 200 Planned Parenthoods around the country offer transgender services, mostly in the form of self-injectable “feminizing” or “masculinizing” hormones, and puberty blockers at some locations.
Youth as young as 16 can receive hormone prescriptions at some locations with parental consent; those 15 and younger can get birth control “to stop periods” without the knowledge of their parents.
Teens 18 and older who want to medically transition can typically do so without any barriers. Planned Parenthood states that “in most cases your clinician will be able to prescribe hormones the same day as your first visit” and does not require a letter from a mental health doctor to start a patient’s transition.
Devastating side effects of hormonal injections
Patients typically self-inject hormones like testosterone or estrogen under the skin to increase characteristics that make them appear more feminine or masculine.
For example, a boy seeking to transition into a girl might be prescribed estrogen or spironolactone injections that will “feminize” his appearance.
A girl who wants to transition into a boy would be prescribed testosterone injections.
Dr. Meg Meeker, a Catholic pediatrician and author, told CNA that “there is no solid evidence found through solid medical research that [hormones and other gender-affirming procedures] actually help children.”
“We do know, however, that many times it harms children — by causing infertility, psychological distress and confusion,” she said.
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Planned Parenthood itself admits that these hormones can cause severe and sometimes permanent side effects in patients.
In literature explaining the risks of estrogen injections, for example, Planned Parenthood says expected side effects include thinning hair, decreased sex drive, loss in muscle mass and strength, and possibly permanent infertility.
The side effects of testosterone include similar impacts: changes to sex drive, loss of fertility, increased body hair, redistribution of body fat, and stopped periods, according to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood major player in transgender services
More than 35,000 patients received gender-affirming hormones from Planned Parenthood in 2021 alone, according to an NPR report.
That number doesn’t include other transgender services the abortion chain promises patients.
Planned Parenthood also connects patients with surgery referrals and helps patients change their names, find hair-removal options, get free breast binders, and change their voices.
A full list of Planned Parenthood clinics that provide these services can be found here.
Ashley Coffield, the chief executive officer of the Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, said in an interview with NPR this summer that abortion clinics are particularly well-suited to providing transgender services.
“Both are stigmatized services,” she said in the interview. “The same values we use in abortion care — like self-determination, respect, and a nonjudgmental approach to health care — translate really easily into serving our gender-affirming hormone care patients.”
Planned Parenthood did not respond to CNA’s repeated requests for comment.
Ringing the alarm bell on Planned Parenthood’s new ‘business model’
Top pro-life leaders and activists against transitioning kids say that Planned Parenthood’s pivot to gender services in the wake of Roe being overturned is “no surprise.”
“It’s no surprise that, as its abortion business declines, Planned Parenthood is seeking new ways to pump its profits and further its ideological goals,” Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s (EPPC) Person & Identity Project, told CNA.
“They are exploiting the very same young people as before, but with a different product.”
Hasson says that Planned Parenthood may position their new gender services as a way to serve patients’ needs, “but they are not fooling anyone.”
“Their business is death and destruction, and their business model thrives on the exploitation of vulnerable young people for profit,” she said.
Activist Scott Newgent transitioned at the age of 42 and is the founder of TReVoices, an organization of activists from all backgrounds who advocate against “trans-ing” children.
“It’s a business model, all business,” Newgent told CNA. “It has nothing to do with human rights. It is just 100%, year-over-year profit. ‘How can we make money?’”
“[Transitioning] doesn’t fix anything,” Newgent emphasized. “But if you say it does and doctor all these studies, what happens? Well, it’s a new trillion-dollar industry.”
Newgent says that TReVoices, de-transitioners, and others have been banned from Twitter and social media for speaking out about the harmful effects of hormone injections and other transition procedures.
TReVoices, for example, points to studies showing that people who take synthetic hormones experience bone density issues, severe heart problems, stunted brain development, and display higher rates of suicide, among other complications.
“All the people trying to tell people this are being silenced,” Newgent added.
Samantha Stephenson, host of the bioethics podcast Brave New Us and author of “Reclaiming Motherhood from a Culture Gone Mad,” says that Planned Parenthood’s move to supply transgender hormones is an “attack on the family.”
“Why is it that the only thing Planned Parenthood helps people to do is avoid becoming parents?” she asked, adding that offering hormone injections “ultimately exposes this propaganda and rhetoric for what it is.”
“Instead of enabling people to build families, these treatments rob patients of their natural abilities to do so,” she said.
Stephenson urged Catholics to remember to arm themselves with prayer, fasting, and the rosary in response.
“We need to be praying for the conversion of the souls who work at Planned Parenthood,” she said, “for their intellectual enlightenment about what it actually is that they are contributing to, for the formation of their consciences to recognize their work as moral evil, and that they have the freedom and courage to denounce this organization and expose the evils its perpetrating as many already have.”
