Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, states are passing stronger pro-life protections, and abortion businesses are shutting down. But it is worth noting that America’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood, is not going anywhere. Consider this: According to NPR, since the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in June, no Planned Parenthood locations have closed. Their evolving business still relates to sex, but not always in ways you might think.
Planned Parenthood has found something besides abortion to sell. Few people realize that, nationally, “Planned Parenthood is the second largest provider of hormone therapy” for “transgender and gender non-conforming patients,” it reports.
Even in states that have banned all or most abortions, Planned Parenthood affiliates are fighting to stay open under the banner of “gender-affirming care.” A term unheard of by most people as recently as a few months ago, “gender-affirming care” has become the umbrella term for addressing gender dysphoria, especially in children and young teens, through surgery, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones. It is better thought of as profitable, appearance-altering, experimental protocols, with very little oversight or regulation, though sometimes it is funded by taxpayers.
Activists push flawed studies to claim that if a youth with gender dysphoria is not fully supported in “transitioning,” he or she is at increased risk of suicide.
Profiting off Abusing Kids
Planned Parenthood has an abysmal record of protecting children. As a high-volume abortion chain, Planned Parenthood has a documented history of returning underage girls to the arms of their abusers, failing to report abuse, and cooperating with sex traffickers. Turning Planned Parenthood clinics into hormone dispensaries for vulnerable young people is shockingly negligent, and it brags that “Most people are able to get a hormone prescription at the end of their first visit with us.”
It is hard to know how widespread wrong-sex hormone therapy is at Planned Parenthood or how much the abortion chain profits from its new business model. The nation’s number one abortion vendor has yet to release its annual report for 2021, and considering that it stayed open during Covid and got taxpayer dollars tied to the pandemic, a fat bottom line seems pretty certain.
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Taxpayers don’t know how much of their money may be tied to “gender affirming,” experimental protocols, but business appears to be booming. The websites for Planned Parenthood locations across the country — in Indiana, Hawaii, California, Pennsylvania, and Texas — advertise “Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy.”
Planned Parenthood does not seem to offer controversial puberty blockers, though it spreads the word about their use. It does, however, sell feminizing hormones estrogen and spironolactone, as well as the masculinizing hormone testosterone, to clients as young as 16. And it admits that its “treatment” can result in infertility, especially if body-changing surgeries take place. Planned Parenthood doesn’t seem to offer the surgeries, but it will assist in setting them up.
Activists, Whistleblowers Sound Alarm
Even activists who identify as transgender are sounding the alarm on the way gender issues are addressed with children.
Dr. Erica Anderson, who is transgender, told The Washington Post, “A fair number of kids are getting into it because it’s trendy. I’m not sure it’s always really trans. I think in our haste to be supportive; we’re missing that element.”
How is this sensitive issue addressed at Planned Parenthood? A whistleblower came forward with her concerns after seeing countless young girls in her small community come through Planned Parenthood’s doors for wrong-sex hormone therapy. According to the whistleblower, this took place without a licensed counselor, without informed consent, and without a doctor on the premises. Groups of girls would come in giggling and be quickly green-lighted for testosterone without reading the paperwork of potential complications.
Abigail Shrier, who has researched the sudden dramatic increase in teen girls undergoing wrong-sex hormones and surgery, noted that there are many serious potential complications with taking synthetic testosterone.
She writes, “Risks [of testosterone] include deepened voice, enlarged clitoris, increase in red blood cell count and greater risk of heart attack, infertility, vaginal and uterine atrophy, endometrial cancer — as well as all the unknown risks that come with any major and novel intervention.” And, as one mother of a daughter undergoing wrong-sex hormone therapy discovered, “You will need to take the medicine forever to keep some of the changes to your body.”
When the Planned Parenthood whistleblower was asked if anyone was turned away for hormone therapy after an initial evaluation, she said, “None of the girls.” The whistleblower, who remained anonymous, said she had moral qualms about her role in the new business. “It’s a lot to see these kids, like, interpret their feelings in such a way that they end up being confused about their gender.”
Planned Parenthood’s Business Model
With Planned Parenthood running sex education in classrooms across the country, even for some young children, it has a platform to encourage gender confusion that plays into its new stream of revenue.
Cancer screenings and legitimate health services have decreased drastically at Planned Parenthood for years. As for mammograms, it turns out Planned Parenthood does not and never did offer them. While Planned Parenthood executives continue to use underserved rural patients as the excuse for the continued existence of a massive abortion business, it never has been about patient care. Planned Parenthood has a business model of high-volume urban centers, first for abortions, and now increasingly for controversial hormone therapy.
Planned Parenthood’s friends in the Biden administration are working overtime to push more abortion on the American people, but given the woke acceptance of Planned Parenthood’s back-up plan, the organization is not going anywhere, at least not for a while.
LifeNews Note: Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, with more than 1,300 groups on middle and high school, college and university, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Follow her @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life. This column originally appeared at The Federalist.
