Texas Children’s Hospital Still Leaning into Gender Ideology

The hospital mandates pronoun training, even after trans-procedure scandal.

Caroline Downey is a staff writer at National Review, a 2024 Logos fellow, and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. Follow her on X for more. 

---

Texas Children’s Hospital is at the center of a public-relations firestorm for covertly performing experimental sex-change surgeries and hormone therapies on gender-confused children — but that blowback hasn’t stopped the hospital from encouraging employees to embrace gender ideology in their interactions with patients.

Last year, Dr. Eithan Haim, then a surgeon at TCH, revealed that the Houston-based hospital was conducting transition surgeries on and administering cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to children, despite leadership announcing it had stopped these interventions the year before, in accordance with a legal opinion issued by the state attorney general declaring such procedures abusive.

Despite significant public backlash and the launch of an investigation by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton into Haim’s revelations, the hospital’s commitment to gender ideology persists. While the medical procedures have apparently stopped, the TCH human-resources department still requires that its staff complete a training for interacting with gender-confused patients. The training — most recently administered last month, according to a TCH staff member — implies that staff should unquestioningly affirm patients’ dysphoria, regardless of their age or whether their self-diagnosis has been confirmed by a mental-health professional or parent.

Mandatory Gender Training

The training slides, obtained by National Review, teach medical professionals that transgender individuals face obstacles in accessing adequate health-care coverage, alluding to transition hormone therapy and surgeries. The presentation cites the 2022 Healthcare Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign, quoting: “No one facing health concerns should also have to worry about receiving inequitable or substandard care because of their LGBTQIA+ status.”

A training slide titled, “The Benefits of Understanding Sexuality, Gender, Names (SGN) for Healthcare Providers” instructs TCH employees to affirm gender-dysphoric patients in the way they collect their personal information. Last year’s training touches on very similar themes, an employee at TCH told National Review.

“Knowing the answers to sexual orientation and gender identity questions allows caregivers to ask questions and gather important patient data for those whose sex at birth is different than their gender identity, those whose anatomy at birth does not fit into a male or female category i.e., intersex, and transgender patients,” the slide reads, reinforcing the core tenet of radical gender ideology that a person can be born in the wrong body.

Staff members serving in certain patient-facing roles at TCH receive additional training on asking patients questions related to their preferred gender, names, and sexuality, according to the slides.

The presentation defines gender identity, gender expression, gender dysphoria, and sexual orientation. It urges medical professionals against assuming a patient’s gender just from their appearance. Within the gender spectrum between boy/man and girl/woman, one slide shows, are other identities, including “Bigender,” “Agender,” “Gender Queer,” “Gender Fluid,” and “Non-binary.”

Procedures such as hormone therapy and gender-transition surgery typically follow a period of so-called social transition, which includes accommodating a patient’s preferred identity, pronouns, and name. Rather than interrogating whether there are underlying mental-health conditions or environmental factors that might be contributing to the patient’s dysphoria, as some dissenting mental-health professionals urge, the “affirmation” model employed by TCH can lay the groundwork for escalating medical interventions.

Hormone therapies and gender-transition surgery, particularly when performed on minors, come with unalterable and often medically disastrous consequences, including infertility, loss of sexual function, and decreased bone density.

Other slides in the training portray “LGBTQIA+” as an aggrieved minority group, citing statistics that 57 percent experience depression, those aged 16 to 27 are five times more likely to attempt suicide, and 71 percent choose not to reach out to a crisis support service in a crisis.

An October 2019 study from the American Journal of Psychiatry found no evidence that surgical and hormonal gender-transition interventions improve mental health, undercutting the activist narrative that the gender medicalization of minors constitutes “lifesaving care.”

A March study produced by a group of Finnish scientists found that suicide among gender-dysphoric youth is extremely rare and most likely driven by underlying psychological problems.

Severe gender dysphoria that led to medical transition had no notable relationship to increased suicides. The study indicated that psychiatric distress could be an antecedent to gender dysphoria, rather than a by-product.

The training also explains unconscious/implicit bias, telling trainees it is “crucial to recognize and acknowledge our biases, including both conscious and unconscious, to work towards being more equitable and inclusive in our decision-making processes.”

In 2017, researchers from Harvard, the University of Virginia, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison found a weak correlation between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior.

Texas Children’s Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

Last Monday, the Department of Justice unsealed a four-count indictment against Haim for alleged HIPAA violations. Haim is accused of accessing and obtaining personally identifiable information belonging to pediatric patients in the TCH system without authorization, according to the six-page indictment announced by U.S. attorney Alamdar Hamdani. Haim insists that the documents he leaked to journalist Christopher Rufo did not contain sensitive patient information, although HIPAA does include an exception that allows for the dissemination of sensitive patient information in order to prevent imminent, egregious medical misconduct.

In addition to Haim, a second whistleblower also came forward last week. Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse at TCH, told Rufo that the hospital has billed Medicaid for gender-transition procedures, in violation of Texas law. Paxton is now investigating Sivadge’s allegations.

TCH CEO Embraces Progressive Fads

While TCH’s dedication to “gender-affirming” care is just now being made public thanks to Haim and Sivadge, the hospital for years has been veering into radical territory under the leadership of CEO and former president Mark Wallace.

When TCH finally discontinued its child gender-transition procedures in May following the launch of Paxton’s investigation, Wallace called the decision “heart-wrenching.” He recommended that children be referred to other doctors who can perform the procedures outside of the state.

Amid the riots that roiled the country after the death of George Floyd, Wallace endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Black Lives Matter and Texas Children’s will continue to lead and support initiatives for racial equality throughout our organization,” he wrote in a statement at the time.

Wallace also encouraged TCH staff to attend a protest for “Scientists and Health Professionals for Black Lives” in 2020, amid the Covid pandemic, “to advocate for the black community and the eradication of police violence.”

At the walking vigil, described by nearby Texas Medical Center as a “private funeral for George Floyd,” some attendees carried signs that read “Black Lives Matter.” In addition to Wallace, over 1,000 medical staff and students attended.

Wallace announced in June 2020 that TCH’s Miracle Bridge would be lit up in black and yellow until Juneteenth to “show our support for the Black Lives Matter movement.”

“But we are just beginning,” he added. “I am working with administrative and medical staff leaders throughout the organization on upcoming programs and plans that will help spark conversation and meaningful change.”

Wallace’s past political donations reveal his personal and corporate commitment to progressive causes. They include several small-donor contributions to ActBlue, the major Democratic fundraising platform, and progressive PAC Win the Era. The PAC  has lobbied against Florida’s Parent Rights in Education law, misleadingly dubbed by critics the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Under Wallace’s leadership, Texas Children’s Hospital embraced radical progressive positions on gender ideology that eventually led to a covert child sex-change operation.

This article was originally published at National Review.