PITTSBURGH (LifeSiteNews) — A children’s hospital is fighting against a Department of Justice (DOJ) request for information about transgender procedures on minors committed at the facility.
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh is part of a nationwide DOJ investigation into whether medical professionals and hospitals committed fraud when they committed chemical or surgical mutilation on minors.
The Public Interest Law Center (PILC) has filed a motion in the case on behalf of gender-confused minors.
“PILC is seeking to block the DOJ’s request for patient names, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses as well as information about their parents or guardians,” WESA reported. “The law center, joined by Ballard Spahr, is also seeking to shield documents related to diagnoses and patient assessments that formed the basis for [interventions] including puberty blockers and hormone [use].”
The hospital announced a pause on new surgical and chemical mutilation of minors. Following the decision, gender-confused minors “filed a discrimination complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission,” WESA reported in September.
In April, Penn State Health also paused the procedures for minors.
The decision also drew a rebuke from the city’s leftist mayor, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. The decision followed directives from the Trump administration that opposed the procedures.
“It is unacceptable for UPMC, Pennsylvania’s largest hospital system, to do Trump’s bidding by tearing away health care from our most vulnerable neighbors,” Mayor Ed Gainey wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page in March.
He wrote further that he had “worked with City Council to make Pittsburgh a sanctuary city for [so-called] gender-affirming care” and vowed to “fight” Trump’s crackdown on child mutilation.
The defense of the drugs and surgeries comes despite numerous studies and personal testimonies affirming that the procedures caused life-long damage.
Transgender drugs and surgeries have been linked to suicidality, bone density loss, heart diseases, stroke, cancer, and numerous other medical problems. Puberty blockers can also cause infertility, as would be expected from drugs intended to stop the normal development of the reproductive system.
The Trump administration has taken a number of actions to oppose the proliferation of transgender drugs and surgeries across the country, particularly on minors.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, President Trump issued an executive order that ended all federal support for “transition” procedures on minors, rescinded or amended all of the Biden health bureaucracy’s past endorsements of underage “transitioning,” and called for a review of the medical literature on the subject, enforcing all existing restrictions on underage “transitioning,” and taking regulatory action to “end” the practice to the greatest extent possible under current law.
Pennsylvania does not currently protect minors from the permanently damaging procedures. However, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this summer that states have the right to protect minors from the lifelong damage of puberty blockers, surgeries to remove or damage healthy body parts, and other procedures often called “gender-affirming care.”