Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital
Gov. Bill Lee has called for an investigation into the Pediatric Transgender Clinic at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt after right-wing activist and media figure Matt Walsh posted a thread on social media calling into question the clinic’s actions.
“The ‘pediatric transgender clinic’ at Vanderbilt University Medical Center raises serious moral, ethical and legal concerns,” Lee said in a statement to The Daily Wire, which recently relocated to Nashville and where Walsh hosts a podcast. “We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain. We have to protect Tennessee children, and this warrants a thorough investigation.”
Walsh tweeted Tuesday about his own investigation into the clinic, accusing VUMC of getting into gender-affirming surgeries for the money and criticizing its Trans Buddy program.
“Vanderbilt University Medical Center is now the subject of social media posts and a video that misrepresent facts about the care the Medical Center provides to transgender patients,” the hospital said in a statement. “VUMC began its Transgender Health Clinic because transgender individuals are a high-risk population for mental and physical health issues and have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system.”
Boston Children’s Hospital was the target of a similar far-right campaign against trans health care, and on Thursday the FBI made an arrest in a bomb threat against the hospital. A Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson said the department had not received any threat reports “regarding this topic.”
One video Walsh highlighted features Vanderbilt University law and genomics professor Ellen Clayton, who discouraged physicians from religious objections to transgender surgeries.
“Saying that you’re not going to do something because of your … religious beliefs is not without consequences, and it should not be without consequences,” she said in the undated clip. “I just want to put that out there. If you don’t want to do this kind of work, don’t work at Vanderbilt.”
Vanderbilt responded to say that employees can decline to participate in care they find “morally objectionable” or that goes against religious or personal beliefs, including for transgender patients, and that the institution does not permit discrimination against employees who do so.
In another tweet, Walsh refers to gender-affirming hormone therapy as chemical castration and says VUMC employees “now castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults.” Walsh previously advocated against mask mandates in Nashville schools by arguing that kids were almost as likely to die from COVID-19 as from “a rock from the sky.”
In another attached video, a nurse practitioner cites information from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health about top surgery for transgender males, which can be performed on minors if the clinic receives parental consent and a “letter of persistent, well-documented gender dysphoria” by a clinical mental health provider. VUMC’s statement reiterated that the hospital “requires parental consent to treat a minor patient who is to be seen for issues related to transgender care and never refuses parental involvement in the care of transgender youth who are under age 18.”
Gender-affirming surgeries are on the rise, though often aren’t explicitly taught in plastic surgery programs. A student and professor in the Department of Plastic Surgery at Vanderbilt authored a paper earlier this year advocating for adding these surgeries to the curriculum.
“For some of our patients, their gender dysphoria [is] so severe that their quality of life is just so bad anyways without these surgeries,” VUMC medical student Rishub Das told Scene sister publication the Nashville Post. “Even if it does mean that they have a small complication or if they have an extended hospital stay, they're willing to take that risk. Because they just need it.”
Tennessee legislative leaders including House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) and House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) spoke out in support of Lee and pledged to introduce legislation to ban gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth in the next legislative session.
“Giving hormone replacement treatments to minors is unconscionable but threatened doctors with ‘consequences’ who have religious objections is against everything this country stands for,” Faison wrote on Twitter. “The Legislature can and will act to correct this next session and I will lead that fight.”
Lamberth added: “This type of child mutilation should be illegal and soon will be in TN.”
American Academy of Pediatrics president Moira Szilagyi said in an earlier statement: “There is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate. It can even be lifesaving. The decision of whether and when to start gender-affirming treatment, which does not necessarily lead to hormone therapy or surgery, is personal and involves careful consideration by each patient and their family.”
