Victory for Children’s Rights and Common Sense in Texas

Texas Children’s Hospital’s agreement to stop harming kids under the guise of “gender medicine” is a great victory for children’s rights and common sense in the Lone Star State.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spearheaded a lawsuit alleging the hospital falsely billed Texas Medicaid for illegal “transgender” medical interventions.

A settlement was first announced in May. Now, it’s been finalized.

As our Daily Citizen team reported, the settlement requires the hospital to:

• Stop performing sex-rejecting surgeries and hormone interventions on minors.

• Fire and de-credential five doctors who performed sex-rejecting procedures on minors.

• Pay $10 million in damages and civil penalties to “resolve allegations” that it committed insurance fraud to pay for sex-rejecting procedures.

• Commit to establish a clinic dedicated to “the provision of medical care to “detransitioners.”

The hospital will open its detransition clinic by October.

“This historic settlement is a resounding defeat for the radical gender ideology that has preyed on Texas children under the guise of ‘care,’” said Attorney General Paxton. He’s exactly right.

Chloe Cole, who I spoke with on my ReFOCUS podcast, and was featured in Focus on the Family’s latest documentary Truth Rising, has been outspoken about the harms she experienced from “transitioning” and the need for a detransition clinic.

“As someone who started down the sex-change path at age 12, I can’t overstate how much this new clinic is needed,” Chloe wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Until now, people like me have been wandering in a medical wilderness—hurt by those we trusted, searching for a path back to health and happiness.”

Texas Children’s Hospital’s settlement and establishment of a detransition clinic is a huge step forward in efforts to protect all children from being harmed by a radical ideology which has real consequences for real people.

To quote scholar Richard Weaver, “Ideas have consequences.” The idea that sex is not a God-given, inherent part of human identity, and that individuals can change their sex, has had terrible costs for thousands of victims.

These individuals, like my friend Chloe, deserve to have a medical system that is ready and willing to right the wrongs inflicted upon them.

Scripture teaches us that our governing authorities are “instituted by God” and those in power over us are “servants of God, avengers who carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13).

Every elected or unelected official who has fought against the harms being done to children suffering from confusion over their sexual identity deserves our thanks.

For those still caught in the lies and confusion of transgenderism, my fervent hope and prayer is they will come to know the truth about who God created them to be. Even more, I pray they come to know the author of truth, Jesus Christ, who taught, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Only in Christ can we all find true hope, healing and restoration.

Please join me in prayer for Chloe, and those like her, suffering from the damage caused by gender ideology. We must all continue to speak the truth in love about the transgender issue until the day comes that misguided gender medicine is a thing of the past.