"Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording..."

"... that falsely suggested the hospital is performing hysterectomies on transgender children, a hospital spokeswoman said. The torrent of harassment was accompanied by social media posts suggesting that Children’s be bombed and its doctors placed in a woodchipper. The recording, made by Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik, features two telephone operators at the renowned D.C. medical facility stating — in response to Raichik’s questions — that a 16-year-old trans boy would be eligible for a hysterectomy at the hospital’s gender development clinic. Children’s has not disputed the authenticity of the recording but said the employees provided inaccurate information."

The Washington Post reports in "Children’s hospital threatened after Libs of TikTok recording on trans hysterectomies."

This post marks the occasion of my abandoning the shorthand "WaPo" for The Washington Post. It suddenly looks offensively cutesy to me. It saves keystrokes but it imposes lightheartedness. 

The removal of healthy, functioning organs from children is shocking. True threats of violence are wrong, but they don't cancel out the wrongs that provoked the death threats. But did the hospital do wrong? We're told the recording was real — "not disputed" — but "employees provided inaccurate information." How inaccurate?

Here's the recording:

🚨BREAKING EXCLUSIVE REPORT🚨

.@ChildrensNatl admits in damning audio recording that they do “gender affirming” hysterectomies on minors including 16-year-olds and “younger kids”

Full story here: https://t.co/NLtLoew2lT pic.twitter.com/Izt8sGMgTX

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 25, 2022

That's very clear. But the "employees" got something wrong? The Post provides this transcription of the call:

[T]wo hospital employees answering the phones state unambiguously that a minor patient could receive a gender-affirming hysterectomy.

“It depends. Each department’s different. Some departments cut off at 18,” one telephone operator says in response to Raichik’s question about whether a minor would be eligible for the surgery. “How old is your patient?”

“Sixteen,” Raichik says.

“Okay,” the operator replies. “Alright. So they’re in the clear.”

After confirming with a second person over the phone that a 16-year-old would be eligible for a gender-affirming hysterectomy, Raichik asks whether it is “a common procedure that you guys do for that age.”

“Yes, we have all different type of age groups that comes in for that,” the hospital worker responds.

“For the hysterectomy?” Raichik asks. 

“Yes, ma’am,” the employee says, adding later that she has “seen younger kids, younger than your child’s age” undergo the surgery.

The Post quotes hospital spokeswoman Ariana Ahmadi Perez: “None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care to our patients. We do not and have never performed gender-affirming hysterectomies for anyone under the age of 18."

Either the 2 employees — who spoke separately and clearly on the phone — were blatantly wrong or Ahmadi Perez is lying (or completely misinformed). Notice that the second employee is volunteering that she has seen the children. Maybe she's only seen children younger than 16 in the clinic because they were receiving other treatment and not specifically hysterectomies. Maybe the children only looked younger than 16. 

 

ADDED: Perhaps the loophole that explains the discrepancy is that, as they said, they don't do "gender-affirming hysterectomies," but they do administer male hormones that cause problems with the uterus, and those problems are treated with a hysterectomy. If that is the situation, it's a hysterectomy to relieve those problems. I wrote that it's shocking to remove "healthy, functioning organs," but the uterus would no longer be healthy. I'm just asking, is that what is happening? Is that the "inaccuracy"? The Washington Post should be as clear as it can be. 

ALSO: Libs of TikTok, on her own webpag, has a screen shot that appears to be from Children's National Hospital that describes its Pediatric Gynecology Program as including "gender-affirming hysterectomy." That's for "patients between the ages 0-21," perhaps the "gender-affirming hysterectomy" are only for the 18-21 subsection. That's what Libs thought too, and she says that was the motivation to make the phone call. The Hospital has different language on its website now.