Ken Paxton Bullying Children's Hospital Into 'De-Transitioning' Trans Kids. Next Up: Unabortioning, Maybe?

It would be a funny joke if some right-wingers weren't LITERALLY pushing something called 'abortion reversal'. But not Paxton, not yet.

The Texas Children’s Hospital complex in Houston. Photo by N. Saum, Creative Commons License 3.0

As part of a settlement to end years of politically motivated legal harassment and “investigations” by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (and later, the Trump “Justice” Department), Texas Children’s Hospital agreed Friday to fire five doctors, create a “detransition clinic,” and pay $10 million to the state. Paxton has been waging war against transgender kids and their parents ever since the issue started whipping up rightwing rage a few years ago.

He announced the settlement in a press release Friday morning that, as befits a Republican attorney general in the Trump Era, was generously seasoned with MAGA worship words, so voters would know Paxton shares their hatred of trans people.

Paxton bragged that the new clinic would be the first of its kind in the coming Republic of Gilead, implying that many more will follow, and that it would “help patients reverse the damage caused by ideologically-motivated physicians who harmed patients by performing dangerous medical interventions for the purpose of ‘transitioning’ them.” What’s more, he said, services at the “detransition clinic” will be provided at no cost to patients for the first five years of its operation, with Texas Children’s forced to pay for the services, too. (Guess they found some socialized “medicine” they like.)

By complete coincidence, the settlement comes just days ahead of Tuesday’s runoff election for the Republican US Senate primary, in which Paxton is trying to oust Sen. John Cornyn. Donald Trump hasn’t yet bestowed his allegedly decisive endorsement in the race, so we’re sure that Paxton is jumping up and down with a newspaper headline about the settlement and trying to get Great Leader’s attention.

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Paxton also crowed that Texas Children’s agreed to “fire, permanently and irrevocably terminate all existing privileges, and never again hire or credential five woke doctors who performed harmful medical interventions on Texans.” The AMA has not yet agreed to recognize “woke doctors” as a distinct specialization, but give Paxton time. The hospital also pledged to change its policies to make sure it never provides gender transition care ever again (or at least not until the current regime ends, however history decides its downfall shall come).

In a statement that he may have feared still needed more invective, Paxton hailed the agreement as a great day in his war against the “radical transgender movement,” and applauded the firings of the “deranged child mutilators who hurt our kids.” He promised the wonderful new “detransition clinic” would help those who “have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology,” and promised to continue keeping Texas children safe. (Unless of course they’re transgender children, who rightwingers are certain don’t exist anyway no matter however much they can’t make them change.)

The $10 million payout is to reimburse the state’s Medicaid system for what the state claimed were “illegal” billing codes to to cover gender-affirming care, which by law also does not exist in Texas anymore.

In a statement to media, Texas Children’s hospital said that it had made the “difficult decision” to settle with the attorney general’s office to put an end to a legal vendetta (that’s our description, not the hospital’s) it said had been “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.” Per the Texas Tribune,

The hospital said it spent three three years producing more than 5 million documents to both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice.

“All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts – we have been compliant with all laws,” the hospital statement said. “To be clear – we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation … We stand proud knowing we will always put our purpose over politics and that we have and will continue to follow the law.”

Kellan Baker with the national LGBTQ+ think tank the Movement Advancement Project, told the Texas Tribune that the new “clinic” stinks to high heaven, but said it a little more decorously:

“Texas Children’s is not creating this clinic — the Texas attorney general is creating it,” Baker said. “A clinic created by a politician via legal intimidation is not in the best interests of any patient. Doctors should be the ones making decisions about how to provide medical care, not politicians.”

Multiple studies have shown that detransitioning is actually very rare, and that it’s often motivated by pressure from family or others, loss of family connections, or financial difficulties in getting treatment.

Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy director for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, told the Tribune that when people choose to detransition, “it is not normally because of healthcare complications,” and noted that there’s a real possibility that the new clinic may be barred from integrating mental health care into its services.

In March, Paxton released an opinion saying that mental health providers licensed by the state cannot provide gender-transitioning care to minors under state law. It’s not clear if Paxton believes state law bars detransitioning mental healthcare as well.

Well of course we are sure he will, as long as the counselors are all from the best fundamentalist conversion therapy outfits and have not been contaminated by any accredited medical schools.

It’s unclear whether more than a handful of patients will ever use the “clinic” that Paxton has forced to come into being, but as state Rep. Jessica González, chair of the state House LGBTQ Caucus, said in a statement Friday, this isn’t about healthcare anyway. It’s about scoring political points with the rightwing base, and about laying the groundwork for whatever draconian measures Paxton and other creeps may find expedient:

“Using a settlement to compel a hospital to build an ideologically framed clinic opens the door to more state interference in medical practice, more dangerous stigmatization that truly harms young Texans, and, sadly, more lives lost in our nation’s suicide epidemic,” said González[.]

As many have pointed out, the state government’s war on trans people and their families has already led many to flee Texas for safer places, so there’s at least the hope that fewer trans young people will even remain in in the state to be victimized by whatever the new “clinic” turns out to be. It will be an enormous waste of money at a time when healthcare is already becoming more scarce, and if there’s any justice in our damned nation, it will eventually close without having done too much harm.

This madness can’t last forever, not even in Texas. This may not be the act of authoritarian overreach that leads to the downfall of Christian nationalist minority rule, but Americans really get sick quickly of hateful fanatics running things.

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[Texas Tribune / Houston Public Media / Houston Chronicle (gift link)]

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