Dear Planned Parenthood,
I cannot support you at this time and here is why. Planned Parenthood does not require any sort of mental health assessment before youth seeking hormones for transition can obtain those powerful medicines. What else are you neglecting here? Careful health assessment for other underlying medical conditions that could make hormones physically dangerous? This is simply irresponsible, and may even cross the line into medical malpractice. At the least, it completely ignores even the WPATH standards of care.
In an op-ed written by Dr Erica Anderson, probably the most notable expert in LGBTQ+ health in the US and who is herself a trans woman, she writes of her serious concerns that youth are subject to social contagion when it comes to transgender ideology. Please read this op-ed carefully. Even the most prominent experts in this field are now talking openly about how many teens and young adults now suddenly presenting as “trans” are likely heavily influenced by their peers and the internet.
The many stories now out in the open from detransitioners who feel they were harmed by the medical community is growing (more than 24,000 subscribe to r/detrans on reddit for example). Coincidence? No. Not only is your organization practicing shoddy care for trans identified youth, you are risking your whole enterprise—it seems inevitable at this point that lawsuits will begin to roll in as those who feel they were rushed into medical transition too quickly by health practitioners like yours begin to experience regret.
I once heartily supported your organization because I feel that a woman’s right to affordable health care and reproductive planning is vital to a strong society. Not anymore, because your mission has strayed into dangerous, harmful areas with this free and open access to wrong sex hormones. I’m not saying that you should not give trans people health care, but you are leaving the door wide open for rampant abuse by impressionable young people who are self diagnosing on the basis of social media influence. Shame on you.
Great article! Please provide at the end of each of your emailed articles an email address we can easily forward your article to, with our signature. That way, for example, the correct office or person at Planned Parenthood will receive hundreds of these from people on your email list who want Plalnned Parenthood to know we agree with you.
This will be far more effective than sending us disturbing emails but no convenient action to take, such as forwarding your email to the right party with my signature and the comment, "I wholeheartedly ageee!"
Please help us help you in this way. Strength in numbers, through easy actions that don't require sending money, for those of us who cannot help out in that way. Donations aren't all that's needed here.
These organizations need to hear from those of us who agree with your wonderful article and don't have time to write our own. Most effective to have one person write it, and then hundreds of others easily forward it to Planned Parenthood.
Thanks for your wonderful. invaluable work. xo
I am utterly appalled at how cavalier attitudes have become about taking cross sex hormones. Hormones are powerful things. It's not like trying out a new hairstyle. Everything under the sun should be tried before sending a patient down the path of being a lifetime medical patient. I keep getting ads on facebook from a company called Plume - health care "for trans people by trans people" - and they showcase a clientele of "theys" (don't want their sex to be obvious but you can usually figure it out) as well as "shes" who clearly look like men with breasts. It's one thing to want to be the opposite sex - it's another to want to be something that doesn't exist*. I really feel as if the whole thing has become the newest form of body modification - tatoos, piercings, even forked tongues and foreheard implants - those have all been done. Scultping a new look by tinkering with sex characteristics? Now THAT'S something different! Who can be the queerest of them all?
At least planned parenthood isn't doing surgery? Yet?
I say "doesn't exist*" because yes. Intersex people exist. Trans rights activists love using intersex people to push the "sex isn't binary" line of reasoning. But outliers do not disprove a rule. Wanting to remove all sexual characteristics or to combine sexual characteristics should be seen as a sign of deep psychological distress, not something to be catered to and celebrated. But hormones "on demand" are looking frightfully more and more easy to access. Young people who believe they are expressing their "authentic selves" may be basking in the adoration of their peers in the moment but have likely signed themselves up for a future of unknown physical problems and may deeply regret so carelessly tossing aside their once healthy, intact body.
Planned Parenthood has always been a place I have seen as empowering to women. By latching on to the gender affirmation philosophy, they will be taking part in rolling back gains for women while causing harm to countless men and women. We have donated money to them every year but I can no longer get behind them because of this. An organization I have always hoped would be there if my daughters needed them has become an organization that could easily destroy their lives.