Some feminists are now facing the fact that Planned Parenthood, once a staunch champion for women’s rights, is currently one of the largest providers of transgender treatments in the United States, having become a leader in an industry that supports the elimination of the legal recognition of two sexes in favor of gender identity.
Transgender industry author Abigail Shrier wrote this week of a conversation with a former Planned Parenthood employee who is apparently reconciling the fact that the abortion provider’s transgender political activism may ultimately undermine its existence.
In her newsletter “The Truth Fairy,” Shrier, the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” told of her recent contact with an anonymous former Planned Parenthood employee who explained that while she was hesitant to be critical of the abortion provider, she had grown deeply disturbed the organization’s new high-profile role as a supplier of transgender hormone treatments would lead to its demise.
“They still provide vital services for women,” the former employee said, commenting that pro-life activists “will jump at any opportunity to smear them.”
“Having said that, their recent roles in trans activism are abhorrent, and they’re digging their own grave,” she nevertheless added.
Shrier linked to an April 2017 article at the Daily Beast that affirmed attempts to strip Planned Parenthood of its taxpayer funds would not only affect its already dwindling non-abortion healthcare services, but would also “damage what might be the largest provider of transgender health care in the United States.”
“A lesser-known consequence of the attack on Planned Parenthood is its potential impact on transgender people … who rely on the organization for transition-related medical care,” the Beast stated, reporting the following nearly four years ago:
Elizabeth Clark, Planned Parenthood’s director of health media, told The Daily Beast that health centers in 16 states—including California, Florida, New York, and Illinois—currently offer hormone therapy to transgender patients. From 2013 to 2015, she added, there was an 80 percent increase in affiliates that reported offering that treatment.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told the Beast at that time that about 65 Planned Parenthood locations were offering transgender medical treatments such as cross-sex hormones.
“It’s possible they’re the largest provider of trans health in the country,” Keisling said. “We don’t know for sure. But it’s certainly among the biggest, if not the biggest.”
The website of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands currently states:
Nationally, Planned Parenthood is the second largest provider of gender affirming hormone care, and based on feedback from our patients, we know that the service is needed in even more communities. Though transgender hormone therapy services are not yet available at all Planned Parenthood locations nationwide, we are working to expand access continually.
Shrier told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday in July that Planned Parenthood is “one of the biggest dispensers of testosterone.”
“They are very happy to furnish it,” she continued. “They provide it on an informed consent basis, meaning a young person of let’s say 18 shows up after she’s been obsessing about it for a while, because these girls can tend to imagine that [testosterone] will be a cure-all.”
Shrier wrote in her post that the former Planned Parenthood employee told her while abortions were her clinic’s “bread and butter,” which she supports, “trans identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.”
Feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), which also supports abortion rights, has been at the forefront of challenging the elimination of women’s and girls’ sports as a result of the willingness of the Biden administration to make biological sex subservient to gender identity.
The group tweeted Shrier’s post, asserting, “It’s infuriating” that Planned Parenthood has been “hijacked”:
It’s infuriating that what we consider a vital women’s health service has been hijacked in this way, and engaged in what sound like slipshod practices around consequential endocrine disruption that could open them to ruinous liability claims. https://t.co/OjUj3RRqm6
— WoLF (@WomensLibFront) February 10, 2021
The group published a blog post in July 2019 with the headline “PPFA’s [Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s] Politics Are a Danger to Themselves and Others.”
WoLF noted its position regarding what had been Planned Parenthood’s central focus in the past:
Planned Parenthood has long operated as a chain of reproductive health clinics that had a parallel political arm to support their medical work. As it has related to the issue of abortion care, Women’s Liberation Front understands and supports that work, and we’ve been loathe to complain about them for that reason.
The post focused on the termination of former Planned Parenthood CEO Dr. Leana Wen, who tweeted she had been fired because of “philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood.”
I just learned that the @PPFA Board ended my employment at a secret meeting. We were engaged in good faith negotiations about my departure based on philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood. My statement to come shortly.
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) July 16, 2019
WoLF noted an article at BuzzFeed indicated Wen was fired, in part, because she “refused to use ‘trans-inclusive’ language, for example saying ‘people’ instead of ‘women’ and telling staff that she believed talking about transgender issues would ‘isolate people in the Midwest.’”
The feminist group observed, however, a subsequent denial at NBC News that Wen was fired over a rejection of transgender activism, both by Wen herself and a transgender PPFA board member.
“Given that story also describes how PPFA seeks to expand its sideline of prescribing cross-sex hormones to gender non-conforming patients, we are skeptical of this denial,” WoLF stated.
“The rest of their accredited medical personnel will hopefully take the chance to consider whether or not the organization, having shown themselves willing to fire any dissenters, is going to expose them to a degree of medical liability beyond their worst nightmares,” WoLF added.
In February 2020, Breitbart News reached out to Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW), requesting comment on the plight of three female high school runners who had filed a federal lawsuit that aims to safeguard fairness in women’s sports. Neither organization responded to the request.
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