Massachusetts taxpayers footed $1.4 million for Boston Children's Hospital 'gender transition services'

BOSTON, MA - An exclusive report from the Daily Caller News Foundation revealed that Boston Children’s Hospital received over $1.4 million in Massachusetts taxpayer dollars for “gender transition services.” That information came from a public records request made by the outlet. 

The money, in the form of reimbursements, came between January 2015 and May 2023, according to documents reviewed. 

Boston Children’s Hospital has touted itself as creating the first pediatric and adolescent transgender “health” program in the country and was slammed last year when it was revealed the hospital performed gender transition surgeries on minors. Those surgical procedures included vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, chest reconstruction, and breast augmentation, according to a since-deleted website. 

Information received from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) revealed that on July 25, it paid BCH over $1.4 million for “gender transition services (i.e., physician’s services, inpatient and outpatient, hospital services, surgical services, prescribed drugs, therapies, etc.)” between January 1, 2015 through May 1, 2023. 

Further, the hospital performed 204 “gender affirmation” surgeries from 2017 to 2020, the same period the hospital received funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Of those procedures, 177 were chest reconstruction surgeries, with 65 of those being for minor children under the age of 18 years old. 

On the deleted web page, “Center for Gender Surgery,” were dozens of videos with discussions ranging from gender dysphoria to transgender sex, “top” and “bottom” surgery, and also a “how-to” guide for talking to friends and family about the subject, according to an archived version of the page.

The page promised that “surgery is never the first step in a gender transition” and advised newer patients to start with socially transitioning and “supplemental hormones.” 

Parental consent was required for patients, some as young as 15, to obtain breast or chest augmentation, along with a letter from a “medical doctor or nurse practitioner stating that you have ‘persistent, well documented, gender dysphoria,’” according to the archived website. 

For biological boys seeking to become girls, the hospital also offered vaginoplasty surgery (creating female sex organs) as long as the boy was 17 years old. If a biological female decides she wants to be a boy, surgery to construct a fake penis or “phalloplasty” requires patients to be 18 years old. 

The DCNF reached out to Boston Children’s for comment regarding the use of taxpayer funding for transgender surgery for minors. The public records response didn’t provide any further explanation specifying exactly what type of “gender transition services” the state reimbursed BCH for. 

The “Gender Multispecialty Service” website tells visitors it is “committed to providing the best care for ALL of our patients, regardless of their gender identity” and that children should get the support they need to “live, grow, and thrive with love and support.” 

“We believe in a gender-affirmative model of care, which supports transgender and gender diverse youth in the gender in which they identify,” the hospital wrote. “This is a standard of care grounded in scientific evidence, demonstrating its benefits to the health and well-being of transgender and gender diverse youth.” 

Boston Children’s Hospital offers a “Transgender Reproductive Health" program, which allows patients to engage in such “care” as “menstrual suppression, including egg freezing and sperm banking, and contraception counseling,” DCNF reports. 

Moreover, the hospital also offers something called “gender-affirming hysterectomies” but limits those to patients eighteen and older, the hospital’s website reads. If a transgender patient has already undergone a vaginoplasty, the hospital offers “dilation therapy and care of neovaginas” as well. Fake vaginas require some type of extra care due to the possibility of a “foul-smelling brown discharge.” 

The hospital’s resources page suggests male teenagers hide their sex organs utilizing duct tape for “safe tucking” so they appear to have a vagina. The hospital does remind page visitors that using duct tape isn’t a preferred method; however, it shows steps to use it safely so as not to rip the skin off their nether regions while providing handy images to demonstrate. 

As a sign the increase in transgenderism is more of a social construct than reality, a study by the JAMA Network, a medical journal, shows the number of U.S. teenagers undergoing transgender surgeries has increased over the past several years. For example, surgeries for Americans between 12 and 40 almost tripled between 2016 and 2019, from 4,552 to 13,011, with minors making up 3,678 of those procedures, or 28%. Just over a quarter of patients receiving gender transition procedures did so on the taxpayer’s dime via Medicaid, the study noted.