The University of Washington recently announced that it will no longer perform trans procedures on children. In a statement issued in mid-September, the educational institution's Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital stated that it will completely eliminate medications which allow minors to change gender, however, it will continue to offer psychological support for all its patients:
Washington University physicians will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors for purposes of gender transition. Patients who are currently receiving this care through the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital will be referred to other providers for these services. The Center will continue to offer other services, including education and mental health support for all patients, and medical care for patients over the age of 18.
The decision, the educational center reported, comes after the governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, decided to sign a bill that prohibited transgender treatment for minors and even some adults. However, the controversy goes back even further and it all arose at the University of Washington itself.
Jamie Reed denounces practices at the Transgender Center
In February of this year, the attorney general opened an investigation against the Transgender Center of this university after Jamie Reed, a former social worker at the center, denounced what was happening there.
The "queer woman" published a letter in The Free Press in which she stated that the minors who came to the center were systematically diagnosed as transgender and then began their transition with hormones and even experimental treatments. As the former worker explained, she encountered a system that always chose to initiate gender transition, without taking into consideration the reality of its patients or other problems they may suffer.
The situation reached such a level that, in November of last year, Reed left her job and reported the Transgender Center to the Missouri Attorney General´s Office. A decision that several people tried to persuade her about but that she, "in conscience," had to reveal since, she explained, the cases were increasing more and more :
When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone.
The Missouri prosecutor opens an investigation against the institution
After the misconduct carried out by the University of Washington Transgender Center was discovered, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey had no choice but to open an investigation against the institution, a decision that he communicated via his social networks:
I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children. We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been harming hundreds of children each year, including by using experimental drugs on them.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) February 9, 2023
Trans treatments banned in Missouri
The research carried out by Bailey bore fruit and, on August 28, a law came into force by which medical centers in the state were prohibited from providing trans treatment to minors. This was stated by the chain ABC News which, he explained, did not completely prohibit trans treatments but rather vetoed "the puberty blockers, hormones and gender affirmation surgery for minors." Of course, it allowed some exceptions "for those who were already taking these medications before the law came into force."
A new law that both the University of Washington Transgender Center at St. Louis as well as the University of Missouri Health Care Center in Columbia have been forced to stop practicing trans treatments that allow minors to change their gender, as reported by the Missouri Independent.
