Boston Children’s Hospital’s own documents show that doctors are performing sex change surgeries on CHILDREN

Several media outlets have downplayed the prevalence of transgender surgeries for minors amid controversy surrounding Boston Children’s Hospital’s gender center, but the hospital’s own publicly available documents show that doctors are performing sex change surgeries on children.

The hospital has performed at least 65 transgender chest surgeries on minors, the vast majority of whom were biologically female and identified as transgender males. The hospital’s guidance allowed vaginoplasty at 17 and did not list an age limit for “gender-affirming” hysterectomies until online activists shared the hospital’s videos promoting the procedures, sparking outrage.

Boston Children’s Hospital performed 204 “gender affirmation” surgeries from 2017 to 2020, including 65 chest surgeries performed on minors, according to data published by the National Institutes of Health. The average chest surgery patient was 18, and the youngest was 15.

The hospital did not report performing any transgender genital surgeries on minors in those years, although the gender center’s staff supported some genital surgeries for minors, according to a 2019 paper titled “Ethical Issues Considered When Establishing a Pediatrics Gender Surgery Center” written for the Boston Children’s Hospital Ethics Advisory Committee.

“The center staff eventually came to the conclusion that it is appropriate to offer vaginoplasties to certain individuals before the age of majority so that they can safely embark on their adult lives,” the paper said, adding that it was necessary to require fertility preservation or a court order granting permission for surgery to avoid legal issues. Only one minor was offered a vaginoplasty by the time of the writing.

Vaginoplasty is the surgical creation of a neo-vagina using existing penis and scrotum tissue, according to Boston Children’s Hospital, which now requires patients to be 18 to undergo the procedure. The operation takes up to 18 months to recover from and requires long-term maintenance including regular vaginal dilation.

The gender center at Boston Children’s Hospital came under fire after a Libs of TikTok tweet claimed the hospital was offering “gender-affirming” hysterectomies to “young girls” Aug. 11, citing a promotional video for the procedure which the hospital has since removed from YouTube. The observation prompted others to share videos produced by the hospital promoting “gender-affirming” surgeries and hormonal treatments, and the hospital said it was inundated with complaints and threats over the perception that is was administering sex changes to children.

Fact-checkers at PolitiFact decided the claim about hysterectomies for minors was false, but they cited hospital guidance that had been edited after the hospital received significant criticism. Days earlier, according to archived webpages, the Boston Children’s Hospital website did not list an age requirement for hysterectomies on the page in question, the one later cited by PolitiFact, and another guidance page once said the hospital offered vaginoplasty surgery at as young as 17 years old; in the scramble to respond to public outrage, BCH since updated this page too….