A leading parental rights organization called Parents Defending Education (PDE) has discovered that schools in Seattle, Washington, are providing free hormone medication and sex-reassignment operations to children as young as 11.
According to documents released this week by PDE, health clinics at Meany Middle School and Nova High School, which are both based in Seattle, allow kids to “conveniently” get care on-site and for free, although many critics have claimed that taxpayers will most likely be the ones footing the bill.
Country Doctor Community Health Facilities (CDCHC), the provider for the two facilities, promised to offer the medications and operations to both children and teenagers.
According to its website, the facility’s self-proclaimed “mission” is “to promote health in transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse communities by ensuring equal access to gender-affirming medications and procedures.”
Erika Sanzi, PDE’s head of outreach, condemned the schools’ involvement in “gender-affirming care” for children.
“It’s terrible enough that doctors are prescribing cross-sex hormones and cutting off breasts and genitals of minors,” Sanzi said.
“Involving schools is a whole other level of dreadful and scary,” she added.
While puberty blockers are still prohibited for pre-pubescents, children as young as 10–11 will be able to obtain cross-sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone at two primary care clinics managed by the CDCHC elsewhere in the city.
Both clinics, according to papers received by PDE from the Seattle Public School, are “staffed full time by a clinic administrator, medical providers, and a behavior health specialist.”
“The Nova Wellness Center offers no-cost comprehensive, trauma-informed, and gender-affirming care, conveniently at the school,’ the passage reads, before listing and specifying some of the services it offers, including ‘gender-reaffirming care,” the documents said. “We bill appropriate services to insurance if you have it… There are never any co-pays or co-insurance to worry about.”
“We also offer services and support to students and families without insurance,” the documents concluded.
It also states on its website that the Nova Wellness Center provides the therapy at “no cost” and with a “trauma-informed” approach.
Parents have already begun to express their displeasure with the policy since it was announced on Tuesday.
“The combination of the district’s parental exclusion policies, and its provision of dubious medical interventions to change a child’s sex, creates a really troubling situation for Seattle families,” said Alex Nester, an investigative researcher for PDE.
