Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday that his office is launching an investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital over whether the organization is providing gender transition care to minors.
The declaration marks the second such investigation into a Texas pediatric hospital, coming after Paxton said on May 5 his office had issued a similar Request to Examine to Dell Children’s Medical Center.
“Recent reports indicate that Texas Children’s Hospital may be unlawfully performing such procedures, and my office … is working to uncover the truth,” Paxton said in the most recent announcement. “I am committed to investigating any entity in our state to ensure that our children are protected.”
A Texas law that would ban transgender care was recently cleared by the state’s legislature but has yet to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. If signed, it would go into effect Sept. 1.
Abbott had also issued an order early last year directing his agencies to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their children as child abuse, though resulting legal battles led to a district court-ordered halt on such investigations in September 2022.
Regardless, Paxton’s office wrote in the Request to Examine issued to Texas Children’s Hospital that the attorney general “is charged under Texas law with the power and duty to protect and enforce the public interest in nonprofit organizations. In this capacity, this Office reviews nonprofit entities to determine compliance with Texas law.”
In the release announcing the investigation, Paxton critiqued “unhinged activists compromising the healthcare field” and said that “doctors and hospitals should not be pushing mutilative and irreversible ‘gender transitioning’ procedures that will negatively impact innocent children for the rest of their lives.”
In a Friday statement to the Houston Chronicle, a spokesperson for Texas Children’s Hospital reportedly said that the organization is not canceling any appointments related to transgender care.
Gender-affirming care is generally supported by medical professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, with the latter explicitly telling state policymakers in 2021 to “stop interfering in the healthcare of transgender children.”
Federal health agencies under the Biden administration have also come out against state-level gender-affirming care restrictions. In late April, for instance, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said an Emergency Regulation issued by Missouri’s attorney general that limited certain transgender care procedures was “an egregious attack on the bodily autonomy of transgender people and an unconscionable interference with the practice of medicine by dedicated and trained professionals.”
Paxton’s first investigation into Austin-area Dell Children’s appears to be having an impact on the organization’s providers and patients.
Local news publications reported last week that several doctors working at Dell Children’s adolescent clinic, who also provided treatments for issues such as eating disorders or menstrual complications, have departed the organization.
In a statement given to press, parent system Ascension Seton (part of the nationwide nonprofit Catholic health system Ascension) did not directly address the reason for their departures but said “the clinic remains open and supported by other physicians within Dell Children’s Medical Group. We continue to be advocates for the best possible care and treatment for children in Central Texas."
The push to limit gender-affirming care for minors has extended beyond states with policymakers who have taken steps to limit such services. A December report found that at least 24 hospitals or healthcare providers across 21 states “were directly attacked online” and in several cases removed information regarding gender-affirming care from their websites or list of services. Some facilities, such as Boston Children’s Hospital, have been subjected to multiple bomb threats that halted services as well as harassment campaigns targeting doctors and employees outside of the clinic.
Medical groups have denounced these types of harassment campaigns and called on law enforcement agencies to step in.