Catholic healthcare system plays outsized role in transgender surgery, drugs for kids: database

America's fourth-largest Catholic healthcare system performed so-called gender affirming surgeries on 81 children and prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to 113 over the past five years, according to a national database launched Tuesday by Do No Harm, which fights identity politics in "medical education, research and clinical practice."

Still, the outsized role in the surgeries – including such procedures as vaginoplasty, breast removal and the sterilization of minors – played by the system, the Washington state-based Providence Health and Services, which owns 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics in seven western states from Alaska to Texas, is one of the less touted findings from Do No Harm's research.

It's not on the "Dirty Dozen" list of children's hospitals promoting gender affirming care for minors, led by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and also including UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.'s Children's National Medical Center, or the Top-10 lists of billing providers and billing institutions.

CatholicVote spotted Providence's listing in the database, accusing the healthcare system of violating church teachings among other Catholic institutions in the database, which collectively performed surgeries on 170 children and prescribed drugs for 508 of them.

"One of the largest Catholic healthcare systems actively cutting off children’s body parts through gender transition surgeries and betraying the Church’s historic commitment to human dignity is shocking – especially considering that Catholics have long played a vital role in establishing hospitals and championing care that upholds the dignity of the human person," CatholicVote wrote on X.

Do No Harm found that hospitals submitted more than $100 million in claims from 2019 to 2023 for "these experimental treatments on children," which progressive European countries have sharply pulled back on in recent years, covering nearly 14,000 children, which the group called a "conservative estimate." 

The tally is based on "publicly available insurance claims data for children ages 0-17.5 at the time of the treatment," pulled from "commercial insurance claims, in addition to Medicaid, Medicare, Tricare, and Veterans Affairs insurance," who had a "diagnosis code related to gender dysphoria and received hormonal or surgical interventions," the group said.

This includes what Do No Harm calls nearly 750 "sex-change surgical procedure[s]" – which don't actually change sex, which is genetically encoded – and nearly 8,600 children receiving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.