DOJ subpoenas more than 20 doctors and clinics that provide trans care to minors

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/doj-subpoenas-20-
doctors-clinics-provide-trans-care-minors-rcna218141

The Justice Department announced that it had sent more than 20 subpoenas 
to doctors and clinics involved in “performing transgender medical 
procedures on children.”

The department’s brief announcement Wednesday did not name any of the 20 
doctors or clinics or say where they were. It also did not specify what 
constituted “transgender medical procedures” but said its investigations 
“include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the 
service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department 
of Justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Also Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission hosted an all-day workshop on 
the “dangers of gender-affirming care.” In his opening remarks, FTC 
Chairman Andrew Ferguson suggested that such care is deceptive and 
requires greater scrutiny by the commission.

The workshop and the Justice Department’s announcement are the latest 
escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict transgender 
rights and access to transition-related medical care.

The FTC’s panel Wednesday featured more than a dozen speakers who 
criticized transgender health care, including people who received such 
care as minors and now say they regret it; doctors and psychologists who 
disagree with the current standards for providing such care; and political 
scientists and lawyers who oppose access to transition care for minors.

Claire Abernathy said she had a double mastectomy by her 15th birthday and 
detransitioned, or stopped identifying as trans, at 18.

“My doctors didn’t tell me that hormones would cause permanent side 
effects,” said Abernathy, now 20. “They hid those effects from me. They 
worked to silence me when I tried to complain about this abuse. We need to 
make sure no more kids are sold products they can’t return.”

A common refrain from many of the panelists was that it is not possible 
for someone to be “born in the wrong body” and that there is no evidence 
to support transition care as a treatment for gender dysphoria, the 
medical term for the distress that results from the conflict between 
someone’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth.

Miriam Grossman, a child psychologist who has testified in favor of state 
legislation to ban access to transgender care for minors, said the idea 
that someone can know for sure that their gender identity is more 
authentic to them than their birth sex “is entirely unproven and 
unprovable.”

“There is no objective evidence of being born in the wrong body, and 
saying so misleads and takes advantage of consumers, and it impacts their 
medical decisions,” Grossman said.

Ferguson said the FTC’s statutory mandate is to “protect people from 
deceptive cures and health claims. He added that the FTC would post a 
public request for information next week based on what was learned at the 
workshop.

‘Not the FTC’s lane’
The workshop faced backlash from activists and also from some employees 
within the FTC, Reuters reported. Nearly 150 FTC employees signed a 
“statement of concern” dated July 2 about Wednesday’s workshop, writing 
that it “would chart new territory for the Commission by prying into 
confidential doctor-patient consultations.”

They added, “Simply put, in our judgment, this is not the FTC’s lane.”

On Thursday, three former FTC employees also opposed the workshop at an 
event held by Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that promotes 
free expression and an open internet.

Among them was Eileen Harrington, who worked for the FTC for nearly 40 
years and was its executive director from 2010 to 2012. She said that, 
through the workshop, the “FTC engaged in a kind of overreach that we 
haven’t seen for over 50 years.”

Harrington helped develop the FTC’s workshop process in 1992 when she was 
director of the division of marketing practices. Before a workshop, she 
said, the FTC would issue a public statement about the topic and then 
invite the public to submit comments. It would also invite stakeholders 
with a variety of views to speak at the workshop.

“Yesterday’s event bears little resemblance to what we intended to create 
back in 1992 and to what the FTC has done over the years,” Harrington 
said, noting that the public was barred from attending in person and that 
the FTC handpicked people who were allowed to speak and who represented 
only one point of view.

Joe Simonson, a spokesperson for the FTC, criticized the Public Knowledge 
event in a phone interview.

"I looked up who funds Public Knowledge, and I see it's all big tech, and 
so it makes sense to me that a big tech-funded nonprofit, ostensibly 
devoted to copyright law, would be looking for any excuse to attack the 
Federal Trade Commission, even if it means standing against young men and 
women who say they were abused and mutilated by so-called medical 
professionals," Simonson said.

He added that the workshop was not open attendance because the panelists 
received death threats.

Regarding criticism that the workshop included only one viewpoint, 
Simonson said, "Many of the panelists who appeared say they were victims 
of mutilation and abuse, and I don't know who is on the other side of 
that."

Asked about the majority of trans people, including youths, who say they 
do not regret receiving treatment, Simonson said: "We're not talking about 
those people. We're talking about people who were abused and mutilated."

Kellan Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research and 
Policy at Whitman Walker Health, a medical clinic in Washington, D.C., 
said he helped create Thursday’s event to provide perspectives that were 
left out of the FTC’s workshop.

“We wanted to hear from the parents who are in the position of caring for 
their children and wanting what’s best for their children,” Baker said. 
“We also wanted to hear from experts in transgender health.”

All major medical associations in the United States, such as the American 
Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American 
Psychological Association, support access to transition-related care for 
minors and oppose restrictions on it.

Recent restrictions on trans care
Some European countries have restricted access to such care, but only one, 
the United Kingdom, has indefinitely banned new prescriptions of puberty 
blockers to treat minors for gender dysphoria.

Twenty-five states restrict access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy 
for trans minors, though courts have permanently blocked restrictions from 
taking effect in Montana and Arkansas, according to the Movement 
Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Arizona and New Hampshire ban 
operations for minors, which are recommended only in rare cases. Seventeen 
states and Washington, D.C., have measures that protect access to 
transgender health care. The care is legal in an seven more states that 
neither protect nor ban it.

No federal law restricts access to transition-related care. However, the 
Trump administration has sought to curtail it through a combination of 
executive orders and actions by federal agencies. In January, President 
Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order aiming to prohibit federal 
funds from going to hospitals or medical schools that provide gender-
affirming care to minors, though multiple judges have blocked that part of 
the order.

Then, in an April memo, Bondi directed U.S. attorneys to use laws against 
female genital mutilation to investigate doctors who “mutilate” children 
“under the guise of care” and to prosecute these “offenses to the fullest 
extent possible.” 


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.