The Dispatch: More from CWR...

Medical groups ask DOJ to investigate critics of hospitals’ gender surgeries on children

Edie Heipel   By Edie Heipel for CNA

Boston Children's Hospital (Image: JosephBarillari|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 4, 2022 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

Three top medical groups have called on Biden’s justice department to investigate and prosecute activists and journalists who report on hospitals that perform irreversible gender surgeries on children.

The American Medical Association (AMA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to launch an investigation on Monday in a letter saying the backlash against children’s hospitals that perform gender surgeries amounted to “attacks.”

“Children’s hospitals, academic health systems, and physicians are being targeted and threatened for providing evidence-based health care,” the letter read.

The letter claims that hospitals and medical staff who came under fire this summer for operating children’s gender clinics have faced harassment on social media and threats of violence in the form of emails, phone calls, and protestors. The letter also referred to a bomb threat that was later discovered to be false.

“The attacks are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care across multiple jurisdictions,” the letter states.

The groups urged the Department of Justice to “investigate” and “prosecute” anyone responsible for spreading “disinformation” about gender programs.

“We now urge your office to take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible,” they wrote.

Children’s hospitals received backlash for their own content

One of the hospitals in question is Boston Children’s, which became infamous on social media earlier this summer when activists Libs of TikTok and Chris Elston, also known as “Billboard Chris,” highlighted the hospital’s own videos and website promoting its “first of a kind” gender clinic for kids.

Elston pointed out that the hospitals were coming under fire for their own published content.

“All I do is write the simple but horrific truth about what these clinics are doing to kids,” Elston told CNA.

“I’ve shared content which children’s hospitals themselves produced, and then tried to hide. It’s the words of their own doctors which cause the outrage.”

Back in August, Elston shared screenshots on Twitter of Boston Children’s website, which said it offered double mastectomies for children as young as 15 and sterilizing genital surgeries for patients as young as 17.

After the hospital’s own videos describing these procedures went viral online, Boston Children’s removed the reference to 17-year-olds and updated its website to say patients must be 18 years of age to qualify.

The hospital also deleted its entire YouTube playlist of at least 40 videos featuring surgeons describing the procedures.

Conservative activists such as Chris Rufo and Matt Walsh have also publicized the video playlists and websites of other children’s hospitals across the country that offer gender surgeries for children.

Rufo took to Twitter on Monday, saying: “If ‘gender-affirming care’ is so good, the activists and doctors who promote it — and profit from it — should defend their practices in the realm of public opinion.”

Former transgender teen Chloe Cole replied, “‘Gender affirming care’ is so great that we need to violate 1A rights to convince people of how great it is!!!”

Boston Children’s Hospital did not respond to CNA’s request for comment.

In the letter, the medical groups also called on tech companies, including Twitter, TikTok, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to censor what they called “disinformation.”

“[We] ask the platforms to take bolder action when false information is shared about specific institutions and physicians” and “do more to prevent coordinated campaigns of disinformation,” the organizations wrote.

Elston told CNA he has already experienced these effects.

“Twitter is already censoring me, requiring people to enter a birthdate before viewing my account, and flagging all media as ‘sensitive content.’ They’ve also made my account unsearchable,” he said.

But Elston and other activists fighting against gender transitions for children are not deterred.

“Trying to silence us only amplifies our voices,” he said. “If the AMA and AAP want the outrage over gender clinics to cease, there is only one solution: stop transitioning kids.”

When CNA reached out for comment, the AMA referred to a joint press release put out by the three organizations in lieu of a comment.

AMA president Dr. Jack Resneck said in the release, “We condemn groups that promote hate-motivated intolerance and toxic misinformation that can lead to grave real-world violence and extremism and jeopardize patients’ health outcomes.”

“The AMA will continue to work with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials to develop and implement strategies that protect hardworking, law-abiding physicians and other health care workers from senseless acts of violence, abuse, and intimidation,” he added.

The AAP, CHA, and DOJ did not respond to CNA’s requests for comment.


If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.


About Catholic News Agency 10009 Articles
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)

14 Comments

  1. The various medical groups have shown their playing hand and that’s very good. We now know where they stand. Their allegiance is to government and not first and foremost to the medical needs of patients. They violate the Hippocratic Oath at its core. To make a plea to the Justice Dept. is a cause for laughter and ridicule as there is no justice in the Justice Dept.

  2. Herr Resneck, AMA is the new Doctor Mengele, witch-doctor of the decadent cult of medical experimentation.

    These people are promoting mutilation of vulnerable young people fir their own money-making, and enlist the violence and malice of the “Soviet-Amerikan-State” to protect them while they market their neo-Nazi human experiments.

    These people like Herr Resneck should be shunned, investigated, stripped of medical licenses, and jailed.

  3. It is incomprehensible to me that we have come so far as to even have a discussion about the morality of mutilating teens in this country, when just a few years ago if we had learned of a culture doing such things to their young, we would have been outraged and horrified. There are people who somehow believe our under 21 year olds are old enough to make life altering choices with their bodies, but not old enough to buy a beer with their pizza. What has happened to us? I can think of only one answer.

    • As I mentioned in a comment below, castrating & sterilizing “unfit” young people was considered a moral duty back in early 20th century America & elsewhere. Victims were selected if they were epileptic, considered promiscuous, mentally defective, etc.
      If you look at the eugenic literature published in medical journals of that era it’s deeply disturbing but relevant for today’s issues.

  4. Medical groups concerned about cash inflow, certainly not the immoral mutilation of our children sic this administration’s Gestapo like DOJ on critics. Would that the AMA and co come to their moral senses before Judgment and an expected warm, very warm reception.

  5. Once litigations from victimized patients begins, my guess is that the AMA & others will distance themselves from this ASAP.

  6. It amazes that not one word about the parent’s responsibility in protecting their CHILDREN from transgender Mengele-like predators.

      • The nature of the child’s actions influences the existence and degree of parental liability. Though each case is unique, a parent can typically be held liable for any negligent or willful acts committed by the child.

        • Not apparently though when it’s a licensed medical practitioner doing the harm & sanctioned by society. And medical practitioners are held to a higher accountability & standard of obtaining consent than parents are. But I was actually asking how parents can *protect* their children from this legally.

          I was just reading about the history of eugenics in the state of Massachusetts. An early 20th century superintendent of a MA mental hospital claimed to have castrated over 2 dozen adolescents & young men under his care with the “consent” of their parents. Of course, who knows what informed consent under those conditions might have been in the midst of the eugenics craze. People tended to believe whatever they heard from licensed experts back then even as we do today.

  7. You had to know the crazed left would try to use the law to beat moral catholic doctors, catholic hospitals and others into submission. What they CANNOT do, is to force anyone to actually do the surgeries. Those who would capitulate to that, would be cowards of the first order, who will one day have to answer to God for their actions.

  8. If you haven’t seen the EWTN documentary called “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing,” I highly recommend it. It can be found on YouTube, in three parts.

    I also recommend searching for a lecture by a certain Dr. Van Meter, who was a fellow at Johns Hopkins while the infamous Dr. Money was present. He has an interesting tale to tell about his time, there, in addition to some raw facts about the origins of this movement.

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. Final volume of commentary of Gospel of Matthew focuses on liturgy, Eucharist – Catholic World Report - TelePort News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*