DALLAS (LifeSiteNews) – A top “gender clinic” in Texas that provided dangerous, experimental transgender drugs to children has shut down after months of pushback by conservative activists and local parents.
Dallas Children’s Medical Center and UT Southwestern Medical Center quietly shuttered the program, known as GENder Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support (GENECIS), late last month, the Dallas Express reported.
In a statement to media outlets, Children’s Medical Center and UT Southwestern said that they will continue to accept new patients for evaluations of gender dysphoria, but will no longer offer transgender hormone drugs. “Pediatric endocrinology, psychiatry and adolescent and young adult care coordinated through [GENECIS] are now managed and coordinated through each specialty department,” the statement added.
The hospitals said that they “do not anticipate any interruption of care or services for our existing patients,” however.
Hospital officials have not given a reason for the sudden closure of GENECIS, which came amid blistering pressure from Texas parents and weeks of protests aimed directly at hospital board members and donors.
GENECIS, the only “gender-affirmation” program in the Southwest for children, gave irreversibly damaging hormone blockers to kids as young as 10 and claimed on its now-defunct website to have “impacted thousands of youth across the country.” The clinic also made referrals for mutilating transgender “sex change” surgeries.
Children’s Medical Center has since removed all online references to GENECIS, as well as links to pro-transgender activist organizations, like the Transgender Education Network of Texas and Lambda Legal.
Grassroots pro-family groups that organized protests against the clinic hailed the collapse of GENECIS as a major victory for vulnerable children.
“Thanks to Save Texas Kids volunteers, the abusive GENECIS facility has been disbanded,” said Save Texas Kids, a local parents group. “Hundreds of kids will be able to stay kids and grow out of their gender dysphoria and enjoy the bodies God has given them instead of suffering the harm of these abusive and crippling procedures.”
“While Save Texas Kids celebrates this announcement, we fear that some of these procedures will continue covertly,” STK noted. “Thus, we are demanding UTSW and Children’s Medical hold to their commitment of not prescribing any form of hormone therapy for minors … and refrain from referring children to other facilities that could perform such procedures.”
Save Texas Kids for weeks protested at board members’ houses and office buildings, demanding that they dismantle GENECIS. The group demonstrated at the office of Robbie Briggs, a Children’s Medical board member and owner of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International retail firm, days before the hospital confirmed the closure of the clinic. One protester at the event held a sign that read, “Dallas Children’s Board Member Robbie Briggs Castrates Kids!” according to the Daily Express.
Texas MassResitance, which began protesting GENECIS in March, also celebrated the demise of the program, calling it “a big victory for the pro-family movement.”
“It follows months of intense activism and pressure by Texas MassResistance, and others, on the hospital, the Texas Legislature, and the Governor,” MassResistance said. “This is what relentless pro-family activism can accomplish! Even arrogant high-ranking state politicians can be forced to do the right thing.”
“It was interesting to see and very heartening that the opinion against pushing ‘transition’ of these children and ‘affirmation’ socially, medically, and surgically at the clinic there was called into question,” Dr. Quentin Van Meter, president of American College of Pediatricians, told LifeSiteNews.
“I think enough people spoke loudly and through major donors to the university to say that, we were going to put some financial pressure. Money speaks, and if the university gets the opinion that their donors are going to start walking away and giving to other places, the university stepped back and said, ‘Oops, we’ve got a problem here.’”
Founded in 2015 by Dr. Ximena Lopez, GENECIS quickly became known as the top “transgender clinic” for children in Texas and surrounding states, made more than 20 referrals per month within a year of opening and saw around 400 kids by early 2017, according to local news. Some “patients” were just four years old.
James Younger, a nine-year-old whose legal mother is pushing to have him “transitioned” to a girl named Luna, was reportedly seen at GENECIS.
Like many activist doctors pushing experimental transgender procedures for kids, Ximena Lopez is a paid consultant of at least one company that markets hormone blockers increasingly used to halt the puberty of gender-confused children. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved puberty blockers or any other drugs for gender dysphoria, and there is no long-term, clinical data about the use of transgender drugs or surgeries in minors with gender disorders.
At the same time, puberty blockers are linked to a host of serious, permanent side effects, like “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility,” according to the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). Up to around 100 percent of boys and 90 percent of girls with gender dysphoria come to accept their sex by adulthood, though virtually all of those started on puberty blockers later take up cross-sex hormones, which often sterilize users and typically lead to devastating transgender surgeries.
“We still need to pass legislation in Texas to ban these practices,” Tracy Shannon of Texas MassResistance told American Family News. “We should ban all of them because they’re completely unethical and don’t do what they say, because nobody can change sex. We really must protect vulnerable children.”
Shannon urged Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session to pass legislation that would criminalize transgender surgeries and drugs for minors.
The Texas Senate passed two bills earlier this year that would have that outlawed both practices, but they ultimately died in the Republican-controlled House, despite the backing of dozens of Republican co-sponsors.
In August, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services declared that genital amputation surgery is child abuse under Texas law, following a review ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also launched an investigation last week into two pharmaceutical companies accused of illegally promoting hormone blockers for gender dysphoric children.
Arkansas and Tennessee have also taken action this year to restrict hormone drugs and “sex change” surgeries for children and adolescents.
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