This post originally appeared on The 19th.
Three major medical associations on Monday asked the Justice Department to investigate threats being made against children’s hospitals and physicians providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association urged the department “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.”
Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee (VUMC), and Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio have all recently received social media threats after far-right influencers condemned gender-affirming programs offered by the hospitals and spread misinformation on their practices. This has brought both scrutiny — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, formally called for an investigation into Vanderbilt’s practices — and threats of violence — a local woman was charged with making a fake bomb threat to the Boston Children’s Hospital.
“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,” American Academy of Pediatrics president Moira Szilagyi said in a news release. “We cannot stand by as threats of violence against our members and their patients proliferate with little consequence.”
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.
Kellan Baker, executive director and chief learning officer of D.C.-based LGBTQ+ health care provider Whitman-Walker, said hospitals are facing serious threats to the well-being of patients and their families.
“Prohibiting or interfering with providers offering care to these individuals is clearly something that the Department of Justice can and should be interested in, and should take action against,” he said.
Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, professor of pediatrics at the University of Alabama who provides gender-affirming care to trans youth in Alabama and surrounding states, said that in her view, much of the vitriol around care for trans youth is fueled by the misperception that surgeries are a standard part of the care.
