Rightwing Creeps Terrorize Boston Children's Hospital After 'Libs Of Tiktok' Pushes Trans Panic

The terrorists just want to help kids.

A bomb threat led police in Boston to lock down Boston Children's Hospital Tuesday night; a search by the police bomb squad found no sign of explosives. The phoned-in threat came two weeks into a campaign of harassment targeting the hospital in response to a lie spread by the rightwing "Libs of TikTok" social media account. Libs of TikTok owner Chaya Raichik claimed that the hospital was performing "hysterectomies" on children as part of gender affirming care, and has since spread similar lies about other hospitals as well, resulting in even more threats. After the initial threats in mid-August, Libs of TikTok was banned by Facebook but is inexplicably still active on Twitter and still insisting that evil doctors are doing horrible things to children.

In a statement, Boston Children's Hospital said, 

We are relieved no bomb was found and that employees and patients are safe. [...] We remain vigilant in our efforts to battle the spread of false information about the hospital and our caregivers. We are committed to ensuring the hospital is a safe and secure place for all who work here and come here. We will provide additional information as we are able.

Police aren't yet saying whether the bomb threat was related to the recent LGBT+ panic and resulting harassment, but top media experts like Yr Wonkette believe there just might be a chance it could be.

The hospital has repeatedly said that it does not perform gender-affirming hysterectomies on children under 18, for all the good that does. Rightwing outlets have continued to spread the lies on social media, because it makes people who hate LGBTQ+ people angry and gets eyes on ads. Fact-checking groups like Politifact and Lead Stories have also debunked the claims, which for rightwing minds means they must be true because anything the media says isn't true has to be.

Boston Children's was apparently targeted because it does indeed operate what it proudly calls "the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States,” although it also emphasizes that it only provides genital surgery for patients over 18. The Washington Post   helpfully points out that despite the name, both Boston Children's and Children's National Hospital in Washington DC — another recent target of harassment — also treat patients into young adulthood.

The insanity started August 11 when rightwing accounts, including Libs of TikTok, posted video from the hospital's website in which a doctor explains how hysterectomies work, although the doctor didn't say anything about performing them on minors. The social media lies insisted "Boston Children’s Hospital (@BostonChildrens) is now offering ‘gender affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls,” which, again, is not true. After its phone lines lit up with death threats, the hospital clarified that it only performs such surgeries for patients over 18 who can make their own medical decisions, and who "have a letter from a medical doctor stating they have ‘persistent, well-documented, gender dysphoria."

Once again, that didn't calm down the anti-LGBTQ+ howls either. Media Matters reports that after Boston Children's went public with the fact that its providers were being threatened,

Raichik doubled down on her attacks, even claiming that hospital employees were lying. When a doctor tweeted about the threats resulting from Libs of TikTok’s targeted harassment, Raichik went after them . Responses to her tweet included numerous attacks against the doctor, including accusing them of being a pedophile and a “groomer.”

While Raichik didn't openly call for violence against the hospital or its staff, multiple replies suggested that people ought to go "execute" some doctors, because they're literal demons, and that's how stochastic terrorism works. Since then, Libs of TikTok has falsely accused other pediatric hospitals of also performing gender affirming surgeries, and in one case, implied that one provider performed "medical interventions" on three-year-olds — although in realitythe provider is a clinical psychologist who merely talks to parents and trans children. Yes really.

Most recently, the Washington Post   reports (free gift link) that last week, Raichik targeted DC's Children's National Hospital with the false allegation that it too performs hysterectomies on trans kids, which it does not. That led to the usual murderspew of death threats and harassment, including "social media posts suggesting that Children’s be bombed and its doctors placed in a woodchipper." You really will know they are Christians by their love, by their love.

As "proof," Raichik went all James O'Keefe and did an undercover sting all on her own! She recorded calls with two operators at Children's National in which she asked if a hypothetical 16-year-old trans boy

would be eligible for a hysterectomy at the hospital’s gender development clinic. Children’s has not disputed the authenticity of the recording but said the employees provided inaccurate information.

“None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care to our patients,” hospital spokeswoman Ariana Ahmadi Perez said. “We do not and have never performed gender-affirming hysterectomies for anyone under the age of 18.”

Not that the denial counted for anything, because the claim quickly spread through rightwing media, including Fox News and the Daily Caller, and after all it has to be true because two hospital operators said so — and with that job title, they probably do the operations themselves.

Again: Nobody is doing genital surgeries on trans kids. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care say that such so-called "bottom surgery" should only be provided for patients over the age of 18. Per the Post , 

Dr. Loren Schechter, director of gender affirmation surgery at Rush University in Chicago and a member of the association’s executive committee, said he could recall only one gender-affirming hysterectomy on a minor in 23 years of practice. In that case, he said, the patient was a 17-year-old who had already been in treatment for years and had been repeatedly counseled by doctors to delay the surgery.

“These are considered decisions, and they’re complex decisions,” Schechter said. “The thought that people are getting pushed or rushed into surgical intervention is just ludicrous.”

See, he just admitted it happens! Once in 23 years, but still, clearly it's an epidemic!

Happily, the Idaho Legislature is not in session, so it'll have to wait until January to take up a bill legalizing bomb threats that are intended to prevent medical care for trans people.

And we hope all children's hospitals that treat trans kids are briefing phone operators on how to handle bomb threats and questions from people pretending to be parents of trans kids.

[ Media Matters / NBC News / WaPo (gift link) ]

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