COMMENTARY BY Sarah Parshall Perry
For Planned
Parenthood, June is the cruelest month.
Last year,
on June 24, at the end of a blockbuster Supreme Court term, the high court
issued its landmark decision in Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That ruling overturned Roe v.
Wade and clarified once and for all that the Constitution did not, in fact,
ever confer a right to abortion.
As the
foundation of Planned Parenthood’s vast $4.2 billion abortion
empire began to shake, the solution seemed to be profiteering off a boom
economy for “gender-affirming care.”
After all,
who wouldn’t want in on a $4 billion to $7 billion enterprise while the getting’s
good—even if that means ramrodding manipulable teens through the process at lightning speed?
Planned
Parenthood isn’t just looking to destroy preborn lives. In
diversifying, it has begun to target vulnerable adolescents, too. What’s more,
Planned Parenthood’s “safety protocols” leave quite a bit to be desired.
The
Washington Free Beacon reported Oct. 4 that a Planned Parenthood clinic in New
Jersey gave a full course of cross-sex hormones to a teen with autism, ADHD,
anxiety, depression, and impulse control issues—after nothing more than a
30-minute consult.
This young
man with special needs not only lacked the capacity to consent meaningfully to
life-altering drugs, but the Planned Parenthood clinic didn’t require a letter
from a therapist or even a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before calling
in the prescription to a local pharmacy.
The young
man’s parents filed a complaint against
the clinic with New Jersey’s State Board of Medical Examiners and its Board of
Nursing.
Planned
Parenthood appears more than willing to ignore a growing body of evidence that
puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have serious, life-altering side effects,
many of which worsen underlying mental health conditions so often present
in transgender-identifying
teens. Neither puberty blockers nor cross-sex hormones has been
approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat gender dysphoria.
Planned
Parenthood’s pivot to transgender medicine is not entirely new. As far back as
fiscal year 2015, the organization identified provision of “hormone treatments
for transgender patients” in its annual report.
At the time,
Planned Parenthood had 26 centers in 10 states that provided these
interventions. Now, most of the organization’s nearly 600 centers dispense
cross-sex hormones, and Planned Parenthood touts its status as one of the largest purveyors of cross-sex hormones in the United
States. In some markets, demand for the drugs has topped requests for
abortions.
Although
Planned Parenthood’s annual report for 2021-2022 shows a boom economy for baby
killing, much of the data was collected before the impact of the Supreme
Court’s Dobbs decision was fully realized.
According to
a report from the Society of Family Planning, the number of
legal abortions in the United States decreased just over 6% in the first six
months after the Dobbs decision. What’s more, the Nation reports that the “rage giving”—a windfall of donations to abortion access
groups following the ruling over a year ago—didn’t last. Individual and
foundation giving has dropped off, too.
And Planned
Parenthood’s national office recently announced layoffs—to the tune of about 100 employees. Alexis
McGill Johnson, the organization’s president and CEO, was quick to paint the layoffs not as indicia of financial
instability but rather a shifting of priorities because battles over abortion
access now largely play out in the states.
But in those
states, changes in the ideological makeup of the courts have resulted in
more than a few losses for abortion advocates. And Planned Parenthood’s newest
“gender-affirming” game plan may face legal hurdles, too.
The
organization’s provision of “gender-affirming” care likely will be affected by
the fact that at least 22 states have enacted their own bans on the exact
same medical procedures. In part due to the fact that the number of children on
cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers in America doubled between 2017 and 2021, concerned state
legislators have worked quickly to ban the use of these drugs and
“gender-affirming” surgical interventions for anyone under 18.
The
lawmakers’ concern is well-founded.
A new
study conducted in England reveals that the majority of
children who are put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones experienced erratic and fluctuating
mental health impacts; the mental health of over a third “reliably
deteriorated.” Scientific studies reveal that the young adult brain doesn’t
reach full development until age 25.
England’s National
Health Service has banned the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs by
minors, following a growing consensus of European medical experts who have
backed off gender-transition procedures for children.
France,
Sweden, Finland, and Norway also have put restrictions on the use of puberty
blockers and hormone drugs for children, making the United States an outlier in allowing them. No matter to Planned
Parenthood, which is pushing the drugs as fast as it can.
Planned
Parenthood’s present modus operandi? “If you can’t kill ’em, trans ’em.”
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Sarah Parshall Perry is a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. She has been a guest numerous times on our Faith On Trial radio program.
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