Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday that he is opening an investigation into a medical center over its alleged performance of gender transition procedures on minors.
Paxton said Friday that there have been “a number of recent reports about potentially illegal activity” at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas, which prompted him to issue a Request to Examine (RTE) the center to determine whether state law has been violated. In a Project Veritas undercover video from April, a social worker from the center revealed it has patients “as young as 8″ that have started transitioning.
“It is now alarmingly common for fringe activists to use their positions in medicine and health care to force experimental, life-altering procedures onto children,” Paxton said in a Friday statement. “Across the country, there are doctors and health care professionals who appear willing to sacrifice the long-term health of American children, all in service to the increasingly dangerous fad of ‘transgender’ extremism. It is deeply disturbing, and there is no place for it in Texas.”
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy announced April 26 they would team up to investigate the Dell Children’s Medical Center following the Project Veritas video. (EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Cruz, Rep. Roy Call On Medical Center To Explain Employee Remarks About Performing Sex Changes On Minors)
“These experimental procedures fail to deliver on the promises made by gender ideology zealots and are more dangerous than the problems they seek to solve. While parents are often parroted specious talking points about how their children will harm themselves if they do not transition, the opposite is true,” Cruz previously told the Daily Caller.
BREAKING: I am launching an investigation into Dell Children’s Medical Center regarding gender transitioning of minors. Gender transitioning minors is child abuse, and child abuse will not be tolerated. pic.twitter.com/WOXqssBQ1i
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) May 5, 2023
“We do have patients who are starting [their transition] as young as 8, 9. So, we do have folks on the younger side,” Nora Scott, a social worker at Dell Children’s Medical Center, said in the undercover video. “In regards to prescribing, that’s up to the prescriber’s discretion. They might just require a couple of appointments just to see, it might be appropriate after one. It’s not something that we want to gatekeep and require someone to come see us 10 times before it’s prescribed.”
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) determined in August 2021 that sex-change procedures constitute “child abuse” under Texas law, a view the state Supreme Court upheld in a May 2022 ruling that allowed government officials to continue investigating parents who allow their children to transition.
Paxton also issued an opinion in February 2022 finding that sex-change procedures and puberty-blockers are child abuse.
The Dell Children’s Medical Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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