Chicago City Wire

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago is accused of partnering with local schools in Chicago to promote alternative sexual identities and lifestyles. 

Chris Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow, revealed documents allegedly showing Lurie Children’s Hospital “provided materials to school leaders promoting radical gender theory, trans activism, and sexually explicit materials in at least four Chicago-area public school systems: District 75, District 120, District 181, and District 204." 

“According to a whistleblower, these documents were circulated to administrators, teachers, and other staff at the middle school and high school level as part of ongoing employee-training programs,” Rufo wrote.

Rufo said a training document provided to schools, “Beyond Binary: Gender in Schools”, provided an academic queer theory on the issue of gender identity which “follows the basic narrative of academic queer theory: white, Western society has created an oppressive gender binary, falsely dividing the world into the categories of man and woman, that has resulted in “transphobia,” “cissexism,” and “systemic discrimination” against racial and sexual minorities.”

“Our patients generally fall within one or more of the following groups: Gender expansive or gender non-conforming children; Children and adolescents who exhibit behavior that is not typical of their assigned birth sex. Gender-questioning youth: Children and adolescents who are questioning their gender identities (e.g., “I was born a girl, but I wonder if I’m really a boy?”). Transgender and gender-fluid youth: Children and adolescents who identify as a gender different from their assigned birth sex (e.g., “I was born a girl, but I am really a boy.”),” the program notes.

Lurie Children’s Hospital itself has a “Gender Development Program” in which they provide services as “youth progress through gender identity development.” The institution offers services for “masculinizing” girls and “feminizing” boys. Clinical services offered include pubertal suppression therapy, menstrual suppression hormone therapy (masculinizing), hormone therapy (feminizing), fertility preservation and gender-affirming surgery referrals. The program caters to 22 years of age and below. 

Critics have deemed the medical community’s involvement in transgender services to children as child abuse. Michelle Cretella, M.D., executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, said her field has become overrun by those engaging in gender treatment. Cretella notes while once treated as a mental illness called “gender dysphoria” an increasing number of doctors have now treated such issues under the gender identity umbrella which includes treatments such as hormone therapy, plastic surgery and gender reassignment. Clinics catering to high-dollar medical procedures servicing children have been popping up as a result. She describes the development in the pediatric care community in which the number of gender clinics has increased by 2,000 percent over the past eight years. 

“Pediatric 'gender clinics' are considered elite centers for affirming children who are distressed by their biological sex. This distressful condition, once dubbed gender identity disorder, was renamed “gender dysphoria” in 2013,” she wrote. “In 2014, there were 24 of these gender clinics, clustered chiefly along the east coast and in California. One year later, there were 40 across the nation.” 

Cretella projected that there would be more gender clinics in the future citing that there are "215 pediatric residency programs now training future pediatricians in a transition-affirming protocol and treating gender-dysphoric children accordingly." According to her, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health claimed that procedures are safe and has pressed ahead ignoring the Department of Health and Human Services' findings about the unclear benefits of the procedure and noting that risks were often too high. She stressed that "the federal government stated that it would not require Medicare and Medicaid to cover transition-affirming procedures for children or adults" because of the said findings.

The American College of Pediatricians executive director, also noted that "Two leading pediatric associations—the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pediatric Endocrine Society—have followed in lockstep, endorsing the transition affirmation approach even as the latter organization concedes within its own guidelines that the transition-affirming protocol is based on low evidence.” Cretella also wrote in The Daily Signal that “They even admit that the only strong evidence regarding this approach is its potential health risks to children.”

Despite a clear lack of findings of benefits to gender identity treatment in children, the State of Arkansas lost a lawsuit seeking to block such treatments, according to TheDerrick.com.