Vanderbilt University Medical Center ceased providing minors with “gender-affirming care” on June 1 after a bombshell report from Daily Wire host Matt Walsh last year prompted Tennessee lawmakers to prohibit doctors from performing sex-change treatments and surgeries on minors.
According to local media, the Pediatric Transgender Clinic at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital in Nashville sent emails to parents of children receiving the life-altering prescriptions and procedures, alerting them that the facility has stopped serving minor patients at the beginning of June.
“Your current medication prescription is affected by the laws coming into effect regarding gender affirming care,” the email read. “VUMC will not fulfill refill requests for medication prescribed for gender affirming care after June 1, 2023. … All medications dispensed for gender affirming care must have a completion date that is prior to 7/1/23.”
The law, set to take effect July 1, threatens doctors with losing their licenses while creating a path for parents and Tennesse’s attorney general to sue medical providers for providing children with such life-altering treatments.
Craig Boerner, spokesperson for the medical facility, confirmed the report to local media in an email.
“Pertaining to gender-affirming care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, we continue to fully comply with all federal and state laws and are carefully following the legal proceedings challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s new law,” Boerner wrote.
The Daily Wire previously reported that the Biden administration joined the ACLU and several teenage plaintiffs suing to stop the law and is now seeking an injunction to block its enforcement until a judge rules on the case.
ACLU of Tennessee spokesperson Gillian Branstetter reportedly said, “Gender-affirming care would remain legal during the course of our challenge if we get a preliminary injunction from the judge blocking enforcement of any part of the law before the 7/1 effective date.”
Branstetter referenced similar laws in Alabama and Arkansas that have been blocked while those trials proceed.
Last year, Walsh uncovered shocking videos that showed a doctor calling certain sex-change surgeries “huge money makers” and a health law expert saying conscientious objections to the surgeries are “problematic.”
“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, the video revealed. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”
Taylor, who was not involved with pediatric transgender surgeries, said that “gender-affirming” double mastectomies could bring in $40,000, and a female-to-male phalloplasty could bring in upwards of $100,000.
A report from Grand View Research said the industry surrounding transgender surgeries saw a $1.9 billion valuation in 2021 and is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11%, bringing the industry to $5 billion by the end of the decade.
Another doctor said objecting to gender surgery for religious or other reasons should have “consequences.”
“I just want you to take home that saying that you’re not going to do something because of your religious beliefs is not without consequences, and it should not be without consequences,” said Vanderbilt health law expert and pediatrician Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton.
“If you don’t want to do this kind of work, don’t work at Vanderbilt,” Clayton added.
Following the exposé, a groundswell of lawmakers demanded an investigation into the Nashville pediatric gender clinic and forced the medical facility to halt all gender transition surgeries on minors immediately. Officials further noted that the minor patients were over 16 years old, and none received genital surgeries.