The University of Virginia (UVA) Children’s Hospital features an adolescent sex change track that begins with puberty blockers at an age as young as 11 and culminates in double mastectomies for 16-year-olds.
The services are outlined on the University hospital’s website as well as in lectures posted to YouTube in 2014. Doctors associated with the hospital’s gender clinic frequently tout puberty blockers as “reversible,” a contested assertion that the United Kingdom’s National Health Service walked back in recent years.
One of the clinic’s leading physicians, Dr. Christine Burt Solorzano, said in lectures posted to YouTube in 2014 that surgeries that remove the healthy breasts of women are available to patients as young as 16 years old with a referral.
“Surgery is obviously an irreversible process,” Solorzano said. “They need to be at least 18 years old. The one exception is for what’s called ‘top surgery,’ which is breast reconstruction or breast reduction for female to male. There are surgeons who will do that at age 16.”
The “youth” center services both adults and minors. In at least one apparent case a 9-year-old was moved to cross-sex hormones — which effectively sterilize a patient, according to the video lectures. Patients who are “under 18” may obtain puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones with a gender dysphoria diagnosis and consent from their parents or legal guardians, according to the transgender youth FAQ page.
The same FAQ page, that was updated after the Daily Caller reached out to the university, stated that “teen health providers” offer medications that can “lighten and/or stop menstrual periods” in gender-confused females.
Videos from the Transgender Youth Health Services clinic reiterate the list of services offered to patients, including menstrual suppression, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones. Not all services, such as surgeries, appear to be available to all ages served at the clinic.
In a since-deleted YouTube video, Solorzano said that the “first step” in “gender-affirming therapy” is providing children and parents with “important general information about gender identity in general, as well as medical and surgical options for gender affirming treatment.”
In a 2014 YouTube video lecture, Solorzano states that puberty blockers are “completely reversible,” though she goes on to say that puberty blockers can impact fertility in patients.
“Puberty blocking medicine stop puberty, right? So, your sperm or your eggs in the ovaries, can’t mature like they would have typically in puberty,” Solorzano said in the video. “So, that’s where it can affect your fertility long term.”
Solorzano said that the criteria for children obtaining puberty blockers are that they have begun puberty and obtained a gender dysphoria diagnosis. The same criteria apply to cross-sex hormones, though Solorzano said the hospital “adopted” the standard of starting cross-sex hormones for patients at age 16, based on the age of consent in the Netherlands, according to the video.
Solorzano states that for a patient to begin treatment she must obtain a “full consent” from the patient. She provided a hypothetical situation in which she claimed that a nine-year-old may not “have the ability to understand” all the risk factors, so she explains the full risks to the child’s parents. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Doctor Pushing Puberty Blockers For Kids Helped Craft District’s Genitalia Lesson For Kindergarteners)
“I have to do a full consent. So, I have to make sure that they understand the risks and benefits, not only of puberty blocking medication, but the cross-sex hormones, the sex-reassignment surgery, fertility later,” Solorzano said. “And, when you have a nine-year-old coming into your office for the very first time … they don’t really have the ability to understand all of that.”
UVA is among several hospitals nationwide that offer irreversible services to gender dysphoric youth. Boston Children’s Hospital reportedly offered vaginoplasty surgery and hysterectomies on 17-year-olds, though the organization quickly updated its website to age 18 following reports, according to Libs Of TikTok.
A University of Wisconsin surgeon who specializes in “gender-affirming surgeries” appears to offer surgeries to minors with parental consent as well, according to Libs Of TikTok. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh uncovered that Vanderbilt University offered puberty blockers to kids as young as 13 years old.
UVA and Dr. Solorzano did not respond to the Daily Caller’s multiple requests for comment.
