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Children’s hospital director likens gender-affirming care for kids to treating ‘diabetes or cancer or asthma’

May 13, 2023 | | Print Article

A doctor has come under fire for suggesting that seeking sex-change operations for children is no different than seeking “diabetes or cancer or asthma” treatment for them.

Pediatrician Dr. Angela Goepferd, who runs the sex change clinic at Children’s Minnesota (a hospital), made the remarks in a video published in December, according to Fox News.

“If my child had diabetes or cancer or asthma, I deserve to be able to go to an asthma specialist to find out what things can we do to make it better, what things might make it worse,” she said.

“And if you have a child who is transgender, you deserve that same thing. At just a real basic fundamental level, kids deserve health care that is specialized and tailored to their health care needs,” she added.

It’s not clear why her remarks from December are just being reported now. Regardless, they provoked a whirlwind of backlash.

Look:

Goepferd last went viral in late April when Politico ran a story about left-wing physicians quitting over state GOP bans on sex-change operations for kids.

“We think about this affecting kids who live in [ban] states, but it’s affecting kids everywhere, and it’s affecting care everywhere. It affects the families in the states where care is banned, and it affects the families in the states where the care is not,” she said at the time.

“We launched our gender health program at Children’s Minnesota in 2019 — the front page of our Star Tribune here in Minneapolis — and barely a peep. We have really been, up until recently, able to provide good, high-quality care in a way that we would all want to, regardless of what specialty in pediatrics we were in,” she added.

Prior to this, Goepferd went viral in early April when a report emerged that she’d be hosting a “gender resource fair” at a Minnesota elementary school.

“Minneapolis Public Schools is scheduled to host a ‘gender resource fair’ at an elementary school on April 13 that will include a drag story hour for kids,” Fox News reported at the time.

“The event will feature the medical director of Children’s Minnesota Gender Health Program, which provides ‘puberty blockers, menstrual suppression, and/or gender affirming hormones’ to children, according to its website,” Fox News added.

Going further back in time, in 2022 she reportedly said in a “training” video that she uses a so-called “gender-identity gingerbread person” to teach gender and sexuality to children.

“[T]here are plenty of possibilities of gender. There’s not just a he and a she, there’s a they, there’s other options. This is something that kids are growing up with now that will fundamentally change the way that we’re talking about this. And I think it’s changing it now,” she said at the time.

“So with regard to biologic sex, he may be relatively fixed on one of these unless you’re undergoing surgical procedures to change some of those characteristics. And for gender identity, you may be fixed somewhere here, but it also may change for you over time,” she added.

“So what does it mean to be transgender? So to be transgender means that the sex that you were assigned at birth, the assignment that someone else gave to you is different than the way that you see yourself,” she concluded.

That same year, she also reportedly spoke about “the revolutionary truth about kids and gender identity” in a Ted Talk.

“It is my foundation belief that we all know who we are from a very young age, including the truest expression of our gender identity. And, we actually spend most of our lives searching for the words, and the tools, and the safety, and the agency to share ourselves with the world,” she said, according to Fox News.

Vivek Saxena
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