Contributor: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles threw trans kids overboard

The Los Angeles Children’s Hospital is the pre -eminent center for pediatric medicine in southern California. For three decades, it is also one of the main global destinations for trans care for minors. Do not believe me: the Chla boasts of its file to provide “high quality, factual and medically essential care for young transgender and young people, young adults and their families”.

Earlier this month, he suddenly put an end to all of this, telling his staff at a meeting that the Center for Transyouth Health and Development would make you close. (My daughter was, until this announcement, a patient in the center.)

A new medical breakthrough, have some unexpected research led the decision to cut care of around 2,500 patients without warning? No. He came, said the hospital after “an in -depth legal and financial assessment of the increasingly serious impacts of recent administrative actions and proposed policies”.

In other words, the hospital collapsed. In advance.

Chla moved a week before the Supreme Court 6-3 decision in the United States against Skrmetti, who confirmed a Tennessee law which prohibits most of the care for minors affirmed by most minors. More than 20 states have adopted similar laws that prevent Trans minors from accessing many different forms of medical care. The decision essentially protects these laws from future legal disputes.

But the decision of the Supreme Court had nothing to do with Chla’s decision. There is not such a law in California.

Why, then, without any prescription or law of the court, has the center suddenly closed, leaving so many young patients who need doctors, drugs and procedures? You can probably guess the answer.

Pressure from the Trump administration threatened the hospital with serious repercussions if it continued to serve these patients. A form of pressure has arrived in a May 28 letter Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, signed by its administrator, the former television host, Dr. Mehmet Oz. He announced that his agency would seek financial files on a range of assertive care procedures in several dozen hospitals.

Being faced with the choice of care for a whole class of patients or the fight against administration on access to financial files is not a dilemma that a doctor wants to face. To be clear, it is not a debate on medical science or appropriate care for young trans. Chla followed science – until it does not do it. This is a debate on the ideology on which deserves medical care.

In recent months, we have seen powerful law firms, large companies and universities forced to deal with difficult deals. Do you sit with an administration that has chosen you? Or take legal action?

In February, when the children’s hospital announced that it would stop taking new patients in its center in Transyouth, California, Atty. Gen. ROB BONTA Sternally reminded them that they had the legal obligation to continue to provide this care. The hospital quickly reversed the course.

This is why the recent choice of the CHLA card marks a huge change that could potentially affect care not only for trans trans patients but also so many others.

Because what the Board of Chla has done was, in fact, a choice. In addition, the choice of Chla was against her own medical advice on the urgent need of such care. On his website, the hospital says it was “extremely proud of this heritage to take care of young people on the path of the realization of their authentic self”.

Faced with threats, the board of directors has chosen to sacrifice the care of a group of patients in the hope that he could continue to take care of others. Perhaps the Board of Directors concluded that it followed a raw and utility logic: denying the medical needs of some would allow it to predict much more.

This is not how I see it. In the ransacked blackmail, they approved the fanaticism of the administration. They have shown that Trans are consumable. The board of directors clearly said that this group of patients did not deserve the care that others. When the CHLA was faced with real pressure, its own record for providing “medical care based on evidence and evidence” has simply become too annoying.

This time, it was a trans youth. Who will be next time? Disabled children? Children born outside the United States? Chla agreed to play the game rather than calling it for what it is.

As a journalist, I sometimes give anonymity to a source. It is not an action that I take lightly. The decision means that if it is under pressure, even threatened with contempt in court, I will not reveal their identity. Fortunately, it has never come for me, although others Journalists went to prison to protect the sources. If I had to break this commitment once, I could never grant it in all conscience.

I now wonder how Chla doctors can ever look at their young patients in the eyes and promise that, whatever happens, they will fight for their care.

Gabriel Kahn is professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg Communication and journalism school.